Yahoo – AFP,
Haitham El-Tabei, 1 Nov 2015
 |
Mourners
lay flowers at Pulkovo International Airport outside St. Petersburg on
November
1, 2015 as Russia mourned its biggest-ever air disaster, a crash in
Egypt that
claimed 224 lives (AFP Photo/Olga Maltseva)
|
WADI
Al-ZOLOMAT (Egypt) (AFP) - A Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt broke up
"in the air" strewing fragments across a wide area, an expert said
Sunday as investigators probed the disaster that killed 224 people.
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.
"The
disintegration happened in the air and the fragments are strewn over a large
area," said Viktor Sorochenko, a senior official with Russia's Interstate
Aviation Committee, quoted by the Russian news agency RIA-Novosti from Cairo.
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.
Investigators
have recovered the "black box" flight recorders and the Egyptian
government said its contents were being analysed.
 |
Egyptian
soldiers stand guard next to the luggage and belongings of passengers
of the
A321 Russian airliner piled up at the site of the crash in Wadi el-Zolmat
in
the Sinai Peninsular on November 1, 2015 (AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)
|
"In
such cases, leave it to specialists to determine the cause of the plane crash
because it is a subject of an extensive and complicated technical study,"
Sisi said.
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.
There were
no bodies visible, but soldiers guarded dozen of bags and suitcases belonging
to passengers from flight KGL 9268.
A tiny red
jacket underlined the horror of the tragedy that also 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.
Army
helicopters hovered above the site as the search for bodies continued.
IS claim
downplayed
Flags flew
at half mast in Russia on Sunday and entertainment programmes on television
were cancelled on a national day of mourning for the victims, most of them
Russians ranging in age from 10 months to 77 years.
Cairo said
there were 214 Russian and three Ukranian passengers on board, and seven crew
members.
Thousands
of Russians gathered in Saint Petersburg's Palace Square to observe a minute's
silence and release doves and balloons to the darkening sky.
"It
was impossible for me not to come," said Nika Kletskikh, 27, who lost a
friend in the crash.
"It's so
awful to think that she's no longer there."
Both Cairo
and Moscow have downplayed the claim from Egypt's IS branch that it brought
down the aircraft flown by the airline Kogalymavia, operating under the name
Metrojet.
 |
Russia held
a day or mourning after 224 people died when a Russian airliner
crashed in
Egypt's Sinai (AFP Photo/Yury Kirnichny)
|
Prime
Minister Sharif Ismail said experts had confirmed the militants could not down
a plane flying at 30,000 feet (9,000 metres), the aircraft's flight level, and
Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim "cannot be
considered accurate".
A Russian
team including Sokolov and the emergencies minister, Vladimir Puchkov, visited
the scene in a remote part of the Sinai. Later on Sunday they left for Moscow.
Two air
accident investigators from France -- Airbus's home country -- were also due in
Egypt along with six experts from the aerospace giant.
Germany's
Lufthansa, Emirates and Air France all said they would halt flights over Sinai
until the reasons for the crash were known.
The plane
lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes after take-off early on
Saturday.
Wreckage
and dead bodies were found scattered over a large area south of the town of
El-Arish. Many bodies were missing limbs, said an officer, who requested
anonymity.
The IS
affiliate waging an insurgency in the Sinai claimed it brought down the
aircraft in revenge for Russian air strikes against the jihadist group in
Syria.
But experts
dismissed the idea.
To reach a
plane at that altitude "you would need hard-to-use missiles, so it seems
unlikely," said Jean-Paul Troadec, former director of France's BEA
aviation investigation agency.
"This
requires trained people and equipment that IS does not have, to my
knowledge."
Experts
said a surface-to-air missile could have struck the aircraft if it had been
descending, and that a bomb on board could not yet be ruled out, but technical
or human error was more likely.
 |
Debris from
the Russian A321 at the site of the crash in Wadi el-Zolmat
on November 1, 2015
(AFP Photo/Khaled Desouki)
|
Full
check
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.
Russia has
a dismal air safety record, and while larger carriers have begun upgrading
ageing fleets, the crash is likely to raise concerns about smaller airlines
such as Kogalymavia.
On Sunday,
the Russian transportation watchdog, Rostransnadzor, ordered Kogalymavia to
perform a full check on its A-321s.
Kogalymavia
confirmed the instructions but denied this amounted to a de facto grounding of
its remaining fleet of six A-321 airliners.
The last
major air crash in Egypt was in 2004, when a Flash Airlines Boeing 737 plunged
into the Red Sea after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 148 people
on board.
Egypt air crash: Accident or attack? https://t.co/SpTFyxSnhJ pic.twitter.com/5LGCZUcf2v
— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) November 1, 2015
Related Articles:
Crash means gloomy days ahead for Egypt's tourist jewel
'90 percent' certainty Russia plane downed by bomb - New
Russian airline blames Egypt crash on 'external' factors
Black boxes recovered from Russian flight crash site, says Egypt
Crash means gloomy days ahead for Egypt's tourist jewel
'90 percent' certainty Russia plane downed by bomb - New
Russian airline blames Egypt crash on 'external' factors
Black boxes recovered from Russian flight crash site, says Egypt
No comments:
Post a Comment