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Sunday 01 Nov 2015 - 14:33 Makkah mean time-19-1-1437
 Cairo (IINA) - A Russian passenger airliner crashed Saturday in a remote mountainous part of Egypt's Sinai Peninsula 23 minutes after taking off from a popular Red Sea resort, killing all 224 people on board, including 25 children.
The cause of the crash was not known, but two major European airlines announced they would stop flying over the area for safety reasons after a local affiliate of ISIS claimed it "brought down" the aircraft. Russia's transport minister dismissed that claim as not credible, the Associated Press reported. Almost everyone on board the Airbus-A321-200 operated by the Moscow-based Metrojet airline was Russian; Ukraine said four of its citizens were passengers. Russian officials did not give a specific breakdown of the 217 passengers' ages and genders, but said 25 were children. There were seven crew members.
A civil aviation ministry statement said the plane's wreckage was found in the Hassana area some 70 kilometers, south of the city of el-Arish, in the general area of northern Sinai where Egyptian security forces have for years battled local Islamic militants who in recent months claimed allegiance to ISIS.
The ministry said the plane took off from the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh shortly before 6 a.m. for St. Petersburg in Russia and disappeared from radar screens 23 minutes after takeoff. Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail toured the crash site and later told a Cairo news conference that 129 bodies had been recovered. Photos from the site released by his office showed the badly damaged sky blue tail of the aircraft, with the Metrojet logo still visible. In the background, heaps of smoldering debris dotted the barren terrain.
One photo showed a member of the search team holding the flight recorder, or black box, which Ismail said would be scrutinized as investigators try to determine what caused the crash. Russian investigators were expected to arrive in Egypt on Sunday. Natalya Trukhacheva, identified as the wife of co-pilot Sergei Trukachev, said in an interview with Russian state-controlled NTV that her husband had complained about the plane's condition.
She said a daughter "called him up before he flew out. He complained before the flight that the technical condition of the aircraft left much to be desired." One Egyptian official, Ayman al-Muqadem of the government's Aviation Incidents Committee, said that before the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers, the pilot had radioed and said the aircraft was experiencing technical problems and that he intended to try and land at the nearest airport.
It was impossible to independently confirm whether technical problems were to blame, and no other Egyptian official repeated the claim on Saturday, Al Arabiya reported. In a statement on its website, Metrojet said the A321-200 aircraft was in good shape and that the pilot was experienced. It identified the captain as Valery Nemov and said he had 12,000 hours of flying experience, including 3,860 in A321s.
Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said officials from Moscow and Cairo were in touch over the incident. The Egyptian officials, he said, had not confirmed the claim by ISIS militants who said they "brought down a Russian plane over Sinai state with more than 220 Russian crusaders on board." The militant group did not provide any evidence to back up its claim. "Based on our contacts with the Egyptian side, the information that the airplane was shot down must not be considered reliable," Sokolov said, according to a report by the Interfax news agency.
An English-language statement issued by the office of Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi spoke of Russian leader Vladimir Putin commending the efforts made by authorities in Egypt "to uncover the circumstances surrounding the incident." Militants in northern Sinai have not to date shot down commercial airliners or fighter jets.
HA/IINA
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