A Russian airplane carrying 224 people, including 17 children,
crashed Saturday in an isolated mountainous region in the Sinai Peninsula about
20 minutes after taking off from a Red Sea resort popular with Russian
tourists, the Egyptian government said.There were no survivors, the Russian
Embassy in Cairo said on its Twitter account.
Adel Mahgoub, chairman of the state company that runs Egypt’s
civilian airports, said that, except for three Ukrainian passengers, everyone
on board was Russian. An Egyptian Cabinet statement said the passengers were
138 women, 62 men and 17 children. It said the aircraft, an Airbus 321, was 18
years old. There were seven crew members.
A civil aviation ministry statement said
Egyptian military search and rescue teams found the wreckage of the passenger
jet in the Hassana area some 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of the city of
el-Arish, an area in northern Sinai where Egyptian security forces have for
years battled a burgeoning Islamic militant insurgency which is now led by a
local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group.