A Russian airliner carrying 224 passengers and crew crashed in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula on Saturday, the Egyptian prime minister’s office and civil aviation ministry said.
The Airbus A-321, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia with registration number KGL-9268, was flying from the Sinai coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg in Russia when it went down in a desolate mountainous area of central Sinai soon after daybreak, the aviation ministry said.
There was no immediate word on casualties. Egyptian security sources said there was no indication that the plane had been shot down. Islamist militants are active in parts of Sinai.
Sergei Isvolsky, a spokesman for Russian aviation authority Rosaviatia, told Interfax news agency that the plane took off from Sharm el-Sheikh at 6:51 a.m.(0351 GMT) and ground contact with it was lost with it about 25 minutes later.
Wreckage of the plane has been found in the Hassana area. It disappeared from radar screens when travelling at 9,500m (31,000ft), Egyptian officials said.
Initially there were conflicting reports about the fate of the plane, some suggesting it had disappeared over Cyprus.
But the office of Egyptian Prime Minister Sharif Ismail confirmed in a statement that a “Russian civilian plane… crashed in the central Sinai”.
It added that Ismail had formed a crisis committee to deal with the crash.
Media reports say at least 40 ambulances have been sent to the scene.
The Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya said in a statement that flight 7K 9268 left Sharm el-Sheikh at 06:51 Moscow time (03:51 GMT) and had been due into St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport at 12:10.
The authority added that the aircraft failed to make scheduled contact with Cyprus air traffic control 23 minutes after take-off and disappeared from the radar.
Egypt’s civilian aviation ministry said the plane had been at an altitude of 9,500m (31,000ft) when it disappeared.
Live flight tracking service Flight Radar 24’s Mikail Robertson confirmed the altitude and said that the plane started to drop very fast, losing 1,500m in one minute before coverage was lost.
A centre to help relatives of the passengers has been set up at Pulkovo airport, Tass news agency quoted St Peterburg city officials as saying.
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