CAIRO (AP) – Egypt’s Ministry of Civil Aviation said a Russian aircraft carrying 217 passengers and seven crew members crashed Saturday in the Sinai Peninsula more than 20 minutes after takeoff from a Red Sea resort popular with Russian tourists.
It is not immediately known whether there are any survivors, but an Egyptian government spokesman said 50 ambulances were dispatched to the crash site to offer medical care for any survivors.
A ministry statement said Egyptian military search and rescue teams found the wreckage of the passenger jet in the Hassana area south of the city of el-Arish, an area in northern Sinai where Egyptian security forces are fighting a burgeoning Islamic militant insurgency led by a local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group.
It said the plane, believed to be an Airbus model, took off from Sharm el-Sheikh shortly before 6 a.m. for St. Petersburg in Russia and disappeared from radar screens about 23 minutes after takeoff. The time lapse between takeoff and losing contact with the aircraft means that the plane was possibly flying at a cruising altitude of some 30,000 feet when it crashed.
Militants in northern Sinai have not to date shot down commercial airliners or fighter-jets.