A Russian airliner carrying 224
passengers and crew crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Saturday, the
Egyptian prime minister's office and civil aviation ministry said.
The Airbus A-321, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia with registration number KGL-9268, was flying from the Sinai coastal resort of Sharm el-Sheikh
to St Petersburg in Russia when it went down in a desolate mountainous
area of central Sinai soon after daybreak, the aviation ministry said.
There
was no immediate word on casualties. Egyptian security sources said
there was no indication that the plane had been shot down. Islamist
militants are active in parts of Sinai.
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| Egyptian Emergency Workers |
Sergei Isvolsky, a spokesman for Russian aviation authority Rosaviatia,
told Interfax news agency that the plane took off from Sharm el-Sheikh
at 6:51 a.m.(0351 GMT) and ground contact with it was lost with it about
25 minutes later.
