A Russian passenger airliner with 224 hundred on board has crashed in Egypt on Saturday with early reports indicating no survivors.
Adel Mahgoub, chairman of the state company that runs Egypt’s civilian airports, has said that all 217 passengers and the seven crew members were all Russian citizens. Later reports indicate that nationals from Ukraine and Belarus may also have been on board.
Though an armed militant group in the Sinai has reportedly claimed responsibility for downing the airliner, there has been no confirmation the crash resulted from an onboard explosion or by a surface-to-air missile. Both the Russian and Egyptian governments were quick to dismiss those claims.
The Guardian reports:
Operated by the Russian airline Kogalymavia (also known as Metrojet), the Moscow Times reports the plane, an Airbus A321-200, was flying from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg when it lost contact with flight control over the Sinai Peninsula.
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According to the Associated Press:
“I now see a tragic scene,” an Egyptian security officer told Reuters from the crash site. “A lot of dead on the ground and many who died whilst strapped to their seats.”
The plane, he continued, “split into two, a small part on the tail end that burned and a larger part that crashed into a rock. We have extracted at least 100 bodies and the rest are still inside.”
A statement issued by Kogalymavia cited by the Guardian says the company believes there is “no grounds” as yet to believe the disaster was caused by human error, but so far neither authorities in Egypt or Russia are publicly speculating about what may have caused the plane to fall from the sky.
The tragedy comes amid heightened political tensions in the Middle East, with Moscow recently escalating its military footprint in Syria and as diplomatic teams from key regional powers—including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan and others—concluded two days of talks in Vienna with delegations from the EU, U.S. and Russia.
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