Russian Federation begins to evacuate tourists from Egypt

About 240,000 Russians had already bought Egyptian tour packages for the New Year holiday period, Vladimir Kantarovich, vice president of the Russian Tour Operators Association, told The Associated Press.

It became more pronounced when it was articulated by British Prime Minister David Cameron and U.S. President Barack Obama, though neither expressed it as a certainly.

Moments later, the Kremlin announced that Mr Putin agreed with the suggestion, and ordered the government to suspend flights and develop an action plan for bringing Russians in Egypt home. “All these samples have been delivered to Moscow and are being thoroughly examined now”. “We are also trying to determine if there was any unusual activity among policemen or airport staff”, an Egyptian official told Reuters.

Speaking at the Congress of Russian Nationals Living overseas on Thursday, Putin vowed to protect all Russians in conflict regions.

“It concerns tourist flights most of all”, he said.

He confirmed that all flights from Russian Federation to Egypt were suspended starting Friday until additional safety measures are worked out on aviation connection with Egypt.

Russian authorities maintained that the flight suspension was just a precaution and that they were not drawing any conclusions until they had firm evidence of the cause. We’ve heard a lot this morning about British tourists, but there are a lot of Russian tourists.

Russian officials said a command center had been set up in Moscow with the government agencies involved in figuring out how to repatriate Russians from Egypt. Obama said it was “certainly possible”.

“At the time, we had to persuade people to leave”, Ms. Podgornaya said. “This was hard, a few would refuse to go despite anything”.

On Friday, the BBC quoted United Kingdom intelligence officials as saying the plane may have been brought down by a bomb smuggled on board by someone working at the airport in Sharm el-Sheikh.

About 20,000 British citizens are believed to be in Sharm el-Sheikh and the surrounding resorts, the BBC reported.

But London approved the resumption of flights starting Friday, though passengers were only allowed to take carry-on bags with them.

Hossam Kamel, Egypt’s civil aviation minister, has said investigators had found no evidence to support the bomb theory. He said eight flights would leave for Britain rather than the originally scheduled 29.

“This big volume will affect the smooth operation of the rest of the domestic and worldwide flights”, said Kamal, adding that a cargo plane would carry bags separately for each flight.

Officials have said US investigators were “in touch” with their counterparts in other countries who are investigating the crash.

While there has been speculation about what brought down the jet, the cause remains a mystery.

Within hours of the October 31 crash of the Metrojet Airbus 321-200 that killed all 224 aboard – mostly Russians – a faction of the Islamic State militant group claimed to have downed it in retaliation for Moscow’s airstrikes that began a month earlier against fighters in Syria. Cameron said it was “more likely than not” that the cause of the crash was an on-board bomb.