Russian Plane ‘Broke Up in Air’, Bodies Flown Home From Egypt
WADI AL-ZOLOMAT, EGYPT: A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt broke up “in the air”, an investigator said Sunday, as the bodies of many of the 224 people killed on board were flown home.
President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi urged patience to determine the cause of Saturday’s crash, after the Islamic State jihadist group (IS) claimed it brought down the A-321 in Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula.
Sorochenko, who is heading an international panel of experts, said it was “too early to draw conclusions” about what caused the flight from the Red Sea holiday resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to Saint Petersburg to crash.
Late on Sunday, a Russian plane carrying 162 bodies of those killed left Cairo for Saint Petersburg. Russian officials said it was expected to land at around 0200 GMT.
Investigators have recovered the “black box” flight recorders of the Airbus, which crashed on Saturday killing all those on board, and the Egyptian government said its contents were being analysed.
The head of an Irish mission that will join the Egypt-led probe into the disaster said the results from the recorders should be ready in a few days.
The crash site in the Wadi al-Zolomat area of North Sinai was littered with blackened aircraft parts Sunday as the smell of burnt metal lingered, an AFP correspondent said.
Soldiers guarded dozens of bags and suitcases belonging to passengers from flight KGL 9268 — a tiny red jacket among the recovered items underlining the horror of the tragedy that killed 17 children.
Officers involved in the search efforts said rescue crews had recovered 168 bodies so far, including one of a girl found eight kilometres (five miles) from the main wreckage.
International experts are now investigating other possible causes, and a Russian team including Sokolov and the emergencies minister, Vladimir Puchkov, have visited the scene in a remote part of the Sinai.
Experts have dismissed claims from an IS affiliate insurgency group in the Sinai claimed it brought down the aircraft in revenge for Russian air strikes against the jihadist group in Syria.
They argue the militants have neither the technology nor the expertise to take out a plane flying at 30,000 feet (9,000 metres), although Germany’s Lufthansa, Emirates and Air France have all halted flights over Sinai until the reasons for the crash were known.
Experts say human or technical error more likely caused the crash — although they concede a surface-to-air missile could have struck the aircraft if it had been descending for some reason.
An Egyptian air traffic control official said the pilot told him in their last exchange that he had radio trouble, but Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Hossam Kamal said communications had been “normal”.
“There was nothing abnormal… and the pilot didn’t ask to change the plane’s route,” he said.
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Source:Ndtv
