The bodies of more than 140 of those killed in Saturday’s fatal air crash in Egypt have been flown back to St. Petersburg, as detailed investigation into the cause continues. All 224 people on the plane – most of them Russians – died when it came down over the northern Sinai peninsula.
The country observed a day of mourning on Sunday after its worst air disaster. Russian Air Transport Agency head Aleksandr Neradko has said the airliner ‘disintegrated at high altitude.’ Debris was found across a 20sq km-wide area of Sinai, officials stated. So far 163 bodies have been found.
Image:BBC
The Kogalymavia Airbus A321 came down early on Saturday, shortly after leaving the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh for the Russian city of St Petersburg. Jihadists allied to so-called Islamic State (IS) in Sinai, where such groups are active and in full-fledge, made a claim on social media that they had brought down flight KGL9268.
But Egyptian Prime Minister Sharif Ismail said experts had confirmed that a plane could not be downed at 9,450m (31,000ft), the altitude the Airbus 321 was flying at, by weapons the militants are known to possess. IS has not produced pictures or video footage to substantiate its claim.
A number of major airlines – Emirates, Air France-KLM, Lufthansa, and Qatar Airways – have decided not to fly over the Sinai Peninsula until more information is available. Two smaller carriers, flydubai and Air Arabia, also said they would re-route flights, while Etihad Airways said it would avoid only “certain areas of airspace” over Sinai.
Germany’s transport ministry has told German airlines not to follow the same route taken by the Russian plane. British Airways said that it ‘regularly assessed the safety of its routes’, also saying that it would not confirm flight routes, but that it “would never fly a route unless it was safe to do so”. Russian and French investigators have joined the Egyptian-led investigation, along with experts from Airbus, which is headquartered in France.
Some bodies had been recovered within a radius of around 5km on the same day as that of the incident, but that of a three-year-old girl was found 8km from the scene, Egyptian officials said. The plane’s flight recorders have been found and sent for analysis.
Source: BBC
Tags: Plane Crash Russia Sinai plane crash
