Russian Airliner With 224 Passengers Crashes In Egypt

CAIRO:  Egyptian military has spotted the wreckage of a Russian passenger plane that crashed today in the Sinai Peninsula with 224 people on board, the government 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.

A “Russian civilian plane… crashed in the central Sinai,” a statement from the office of Prime Minister Sharif Ismail said.

News agency Reuters quoted a security officer at the crash site saying that the aircraft was completely destroyed.

The Metrojet (formerly Kolavia Airlines) flight had 217 passengers and seven crew members on board. A senior aviation official said it was a charter flight operated by a Russian company.

According to reports, Flight 7K9268 flying to Russia from Sharm al-Sheikh in Egypt went off radar 23 minutes after taking off.

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 5:51 am local time (03:51 GMT).

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

Earlier, there was confusion on the fate of the plane, while some reports said it had crashed in Sinai, others said the aircraft had made contact with air traffic control.

Most passengers on the flight are believed to be Russian tourists.