By BI: Kolavia Flight 7K9268, an Airbus A320, went off radar 23 minutes after taking off the Sharm El-Sheikh International Airport in Egypt, Sergey Izvolskiy told the media citing preliminary data. The plane was carrying 212 passengers, mostly Russian tourists, and 7 crew. All are believed dead. Egyptian security sources also reportedly said there was no indication the aircraft had been shot down, however Islamic militants including ISIS are active in the area.
UPDATE: Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail confirmed that the Russian plane DID crash in the Sinai.
UPDATE 2: ISIS has claimed responsibility for destroying a Russian passenger jet in response to Vladimir Putin’s decision to bomb Jihadi targets in Syria, although both Moscow and Egypt have denied any possible terrorism link.
UPDATE 3: Authorities are saying the plane crashed nearly vertically, something that would not have happened if there was one engine failure or even two engines. It would have glided to the ground, not flipped over in a vertical position.
A Russian passenger plane crashed early Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 people aboard, officials said. Russian state media reported that many of the 217 passengers were Russians returning from vacation. The passengers were reported to include 17 children. There were seven crew members.
The plane had departed the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, near the southern tip of the Sinai, on a flight to St. Petersburg, Russia. The plane vanished from radar 23 minutes into the flight, at 6:20 a.m. local time.
Egypt has been battling insurgents in the Sinai who are aligned with the terrorist group ISIS. But it is not known that that this played any role in the crash.
First photos of wreckage:
