Investigation launched into crash of Russian jet that left 224 dead
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INTERNATIONAL investigators yesterday began probing why a Russian airliner carrying 224 people crashed in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, killing everyone on board, as rescue workers widened their search for missing victims.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi urged people to await the outcome of the investigation to determine the cause of the crash, after the Islamic State jihadist group claimed it shot down the A-321.
“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 told a gathering of army officers.
At the crash scene in the center of North Sinai, in the Wadi al-Zolomat area, numerous blackened parts of the plane were scattered, with the smell of burnt metal lingering in the air.
There were no bodies visible, but soldiers guarded a dozen black, red and orange bags, apparently suitcases of passengers from flight KGL 9268.
A few meters further away lay a tiny red jacket, probably of a child, underlining the horror of Saturday’s tragedy that killed 17 children including a 10-month-old girl.
An army officer involved in search efforts said rescuers had recovered 163 bodies so far, including that of a girl found 8 kilometers away from the main wreckage.
The Russian Airbus that crashed in Egypt broke apart “in the air,” a senior official with Russia’s Interstate Aviation Committee said yesterday.
“The disintegration happened in the air and the fragments are strewn over a large area,” committee chief Viktor Sorochenko was quoted as saying by RIA-Novosti news agency in Cairo, where he is part of an international panel of experts from Russia, Egypt, France and Ireland.
He said it was “too early to draw conclusions” about what caused the crash, which killed all people travelling from Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh to Saint-Petersburg.
The Interstate Aviation Committee (MAK) is Russia’s top body for investigating air accidents. Sorochenko was appointed on Saturday to head a panel of crash experts to Egypt.
Flags were flying at half mast in Russia yesterday and entertainment television programs were cancelled as part of a national day of mourning for the victims, most of them Russians, aged from 10 months to 77 years.
The Egyptian government said there were 214 Russians and three Ukranians on board, and seven crew members.
Cairo and Moscow have both downplayed the claim from the IS branch in Egypt that it brought down the aircraft flown by Kogalymavia airline, operating under the name Metrojet.
IS claims ‘not accurate’
Egyptian Prime Minister Sharif Ismail said experts had confirmed the militants could not down a plane at the 9,000m altitude at which the Airbus 321 was flying, while Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said the claim “cannot be considered accurate.”
A Russian team including Sokolov and Emergency Minister Vladimir Puchkov visited the scene in a remote part of the restive Sinai Peninsula, Russian official media reported.
Two air accident investigators from France — Airbus’s home country — are also to travel to Egypt along with six experts from the aerospace giant to help with the probe.
Germany’s Lufthansa, Emirates and Air France all said they would halt flights over Sinai until the reasons behind the crash became clear.
The plane lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes after taking off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday morning. Wreckage and dead bodies were found scattered over an area of 6 to 8 square kilometers, around 100km south of the town of El-Arish.
An Egyptian officer said yesterday that the search perimeter would be widened to 15km. “We found a 3-year-old girl 8 kilometers from the scene” of the main wreckage,” he said, adding that many of the bodies were missing limbs.
The IS affiliate waging an insurgency in the Sinai claimed it brought down the plane in revenge for Russian airstrikes against the group in Syria. Experts, however, rejected the idea they have either the equipment or expertise to hit the flight.
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 needs trained people and equipment that IS does not have,” he said.
Experts said a surface-to-air missile strike may have taken place if the aircraft had been descending, and that a bomb on board could not be ruled out, but a technical or human error was more likely.
An Egyptian air traffic control official said the pilot told him in their last exchange he had radio trouble, but Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Hossam Kamal said communications were “normal.”
“There was nothing abnormal and the pilot didn’t ask to change the plane’s route,” he said.
Kogalymavia defended the pilot, Valery Nemov, who it said had more than 12,000 hours of flying experience.
Russian aviation agency Rosaviatsia said on Saturday there was “no reason to consider that the cause of the disaster was a technical problem or crew error.”
Analysts have begun examining the contents of two black boxes recovered from the crashed airliner, and said it could take days to retrieve the data.
A spokeswoman for the airline said yesterday they were ordered by the Russian transport watchdog to perform a full check on their A-321 planes but denied they were being grounded.
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