Russia begins repatriation of tourists from Egypt
November 8, 2015, 4:56 am

An Egypt-led investigation group, with experts from Russia and France, is working on the cause of the plane crash [Xinhua]

“A plane with 186 passengers, including 42 children, onboard has landed at the airport,” Major General Oleg Grebenyuk, the head of the Emergencies Ministry department for the Volgograd region, told journalists.

About 10 special flights have departed for Egypt to bring home about 80,000 Russian tourists currently in Egypt, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich said Saturday.

“According to the latest data, there are some 80,000 people. The number is reducing, because there are scheduled flights from all the three cities: Cairo, Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh, to Russia,” said Dvorkovich.

The Egyptian military is now providing additional security measures for the evacuation at the country’s airports, Dvorkovich added.

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday ordered all of his country’s scheduled flights to Egypt be suspended amid rising speculation that terrorist attacks were possibly behind the Russian plane crash on the Sinai Peninsula on Oct. 31, which killed all 224 people on board.

Although reports in Western media have said that the crash of the Russian plane in Egypt was caused by an explosion onboard, Russian media quoted sources in the Russian mission at the special commission of the Egyptian aviation authorities probing into the crash as saying that Moscow is yet to receive any concrete evidence to confirm this.

“Russian specialists will request the French investigators and the Egyptian commission to provide confirmation of the onboard explosion identification,” Tass agency quoted a source with the special investigation team. “As of now, we can speak only about certain noises recorded by the cockpit voice recorder.”
“It is too early to say that the nature of these noises is identified, moreover, to say that they indicate an explosion,” the source said.
“We have no such data. We will ask the French and the Egyptians to provide concrete proof of their theories,” he said.

An Egypt-led investigation group, with experts from Russia and France, is working on the cause of the plane crash.

TBP and Agencies