Just In: Russian Plane With 224 Passengers And Crew Has Crashed In Egypt

(Reuters/AFP) – Egypt confirmed on Saturday (Oct 31) that a Russian passenger plane had crashed in central Sinai and the wreckage had been found.

However, Egyptian search and rescue team members have heard voices in a section of the plane, an officer on the scene told Reuters on Saturday.

“There is another section of the plane with passengers inside that the rescue team is still trying to enter and we hope to find survivors especially after hearing pained voices of people inside,” the officer, who requested anonymity, said.

“I now see a tragic scene. A lot of dead on the ground and many who died whilst strapped to their seats,” the officer added.

“The plane split into two, a small part on the tail end that burnt and a larger part that crashed into a rock. We have extracted at least 100 bodies and the rest are still inside,” he said, adding that five children were also found dead.

The passenger jet, travelling from the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh to the Russian city of St Petersburg on Saturday, disappeared from radar screens over Cyprus, Russia’s RIA news agency reported, citing a Russian aviation authority source, amid initial conflicting reports over the plane’s safety.

The Russian source said the aircraft was an Airbus A-321 jet, and was operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia, with the registration number KGL-9268.

A senior aviation official said it was a charter flight operated by a Russian company and had on board 217 passengers and seven crew members, to make a total of 224 people on board.

Seventeen children were among the passengers, RIA news agency quoted a source in the Russian aviation authority as saying.

Egyptian search and rescue teams have found the site of the crashed Russian passenger plane in the Hassana area, south of Arish, Sinai, the Civilian Aviation Ministry said.

“Military planes have discovered the wreckage of the plane… in a mountainous area, and 45 ambulances have been directed to the site to evacuate dead and wounded,” a Cabinet statement said.

After delays caused by poor weather conditions, Egyptian search and rescue teams located the site of the crash in the Hassana area 35km south of the Sinai Mediterranean coastal city of Al Arish, an Aviation Ministry statement said.

Ambulances reached the site and began evacuating “casualties,” officials and state media reported, without elaborating on their condition.

Officials and the state MENA news agency later said the “casualties” were being transferred to nearby hospitals.

At Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, anxious family members awaited news of their loved ones. “I am meeting my parents,” said 25-year-old Ms Ella Smirnova, a tall young woman seemingly in shock. “I spoke to them last on the phone when they were already on the plane, and then I heard the news.

“I will keep hoping until the end that they are alive, but perhaps I will never see them again.”

Mr Sergei Lzvolsky, an official with the Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia, told Interfax news agency that the plane had departed Egypt’s Red Sea resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh at 5.51am local time and ground contact with it was lost with it about 25 minutes later.

He said the aircraft did not make contact as expected with air traffic controllers in Cyprus.

“The plane departed Sharm el-Sheikh with 217 passengers and 7 crew members. At 7.14am Moscow time the crew was scheduled to make contact with… Larnaca, however this did not happen and the plane disappeared from the radar screens.”

The flight was scheduled to land at St Petersburg at 9.12am GMT, he said.

“Prime Minister (Sharif Ismail) is expected to meet the concerned ministries and competent authorities to follow up on the accident of the Russian civilian plane that fell in central Sinai,” the Egyptian premier’s office said.

The plane went down in a mountainous area in central Sinai and poor weather conditions have made it difficult for rescue crews to get to the scene, the officer said.

Survivors and bodies of those on board will be flown to Cairo, the security source said.

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had offered its help to Egypt and Russia. “Since this morning the IDF (Israeli Defence Forces) assisted with aerial surveillance in the efforts to locate the Russian airplane that lost contact over the Sinai Peninsula. The IDF has offered continued assistance to both Russia and Egypt if required,” a military statement said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has expressed his deepest condolences to the families of victims of the crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, Russian news agencies reported on Saturday, citing the Kremlin press service.

Mr Putin also ordered government ministries to offer immediate assistance to relatives of those killed, and ordered the Emergency Ministry to dispatch rescue teams to Egypt.

“The head of state has given orders to send emergency ministry (teams) to Egypt immediately to work at the plane crash site,” a Kremlin statement said.

Mr Putin has also declared Nov 1 a national day of mourning following the crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt, the Kremlin press service said on Saturday.

The office of the Egyptian Prime Minister said in a statement that Mr Ismail cancelled a visit to Ismailia and formed a Cabinet-level crisis committee to deal with the crash.

State television reported that Mr Sharif was headed to the site of the accident.

Egypt’s top prosecutor ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash, a source at his office said. Prosecutor General Nabil Sadek ordered the formation of a team of prosecutors tasked with going to the site of the crash and investigating the debris.

Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Hossam Kemal said it was “too soon to determine the cause” of the crash, a Cabinet statement quoted him as saying on Saturday.

The prime minister went to the scene of the crash alongside the tourism and health ministers and offered his condolences to the Russian ambassador, the statement said.

Russia’s top Investigative Committee has also launched a case against airline Kogalymavia under an article regulating “violation of rules of flights and preparations for them”, Russian news agencies said, citing the committee’s spokesman.

Egyptian air traffic control said that it had lost contact with the civilian airliner shortly after it took off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to head to Russia, aviation sources said on Saturday (Oct 31).

The plane was at an altitude of 31,000 feet when it vanished from radar screens, the Civilian Aviation Ministry said in a statement.

The sources said the passenger plane was mainly carrying Russian tourists and that a search was underway.

There were no indications that the plane was shot down or blown up, Egyptian security sources said.

Egypt’s North Sinai is home to a two-year-old Islamist insurgency and militants affiliated to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria have killed hundreds of soldiers and police.

The militants have also attacked Western targets in recent months.

The last major commercial airliner crash in Egypt happened in 2004, when a Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh.

The 148 people aboard that flight, most of whom were French, were killed.

Millions of tourists, many of them Russian, visit the resort town, one of Egypt’s major draws for tourists looking for pristine beaches and scuba diving.

The resort, and others dotting the southern Sinai Red Sea coast, are heavily secured by the military and police as an Islamist militant insurgency rages in the north of the restive peninsula, which borders Israel and the Gaza Strip.