Russian plane crash in Egypt kills all 224 people aboard

Russian plane crash in Egypt kills all 224 people aboard

ATP-  Arab tourism portal-  A Russian passenger plane crashed early Saturday in Egypt s Sinai Peninsula، killing all 224 people aboard، officials said.Russian state media reported that many of the 217 passengers on Kogalymavia Flight 9268 were Russians returning from vacation.

 The passenger manifest included 17 children but Russian officials said there were 25 aboard. There were seven crew members.Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin tweeted that four victims were Ukrainian nationals.

The cause of the crash still is unknown, but it is most likely due to a technical failure, and there is no evidence of any terrorist action, Egyptian Airports Co. chief Adel Al-Mahjoob told CNN Arabic.

The Airbus A321 had a routine check before flight, showing everything was OK to proceed, Mahjoob said.The so-called black boxes — the flight data recorder and voice data recorder — have been recovered and transported to Cairo for analysis, Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Hossam Kamel said at a news conference.

"There was nothing abnormal before the plane crash," he said. "It suddenly disappeared from the radar."Air traffic control recordings did not show any distress calls, Kamel said.

The plane departed the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, near the southern tip of the Sinai, on a flight to St. Petersburg, Russia.

 It vanished from radar 23 minutes into the flight, at 6:20 a.m. local time.Egypt has been battling insurgents in the Sinai aligned with the terrorist group ISIS.

Islamists militants in the Sinai linked to ISIS claimed responsibility for the crash, according to an online statement.But Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim that terrorists brought down the plane by using an anti-aircraft missile "cannot be considered reliable," according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

German air carrier Lufthansa and Air France have decided to reroute aircraft due to fly over the region."We will keep that measure in place as long as we are not sure of the circumstances and the reasons of the Metrojet crash," Lufthansa spokeswoman Bettina Rittberger said.