A ‘noise was heard’ in final second of Metrojet recording: Egyptian investigator

Ireland has also suspended flights to the Red Sea resort, while at least a half-dozen Western European governments told their citizens not to travel there.

Evidence from intelligence sources suggests that a bomb placed aboard the plane by Islamic State militants brought it down as it was flying from Sharm el-Sheikh for St. Petersburg on October 31, according to United Kingdom and US officials.

The U.S. and the United Kingdom, meanwhile, have both said intelligence reports indicate that a bomb on board the flight has caused it to go down, with Shoukry complaining that foreign intelligence on the cause of the crash has not been shared with his country.

USA intelligence agencies are said to have intercepted communications between leaders of the so-called Islamic State in Syria and its supporters in Sinai before and after the crash.

Russia will on Saturday send 44 planes to repatriate its nationals from two Egyptian Red Sea resorts, the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency said as suspicions grow that a bomb caused last weekend’s plane crash.

Prime Minister David Cameron has said it was “more likely than not” the aircraft was brought down in a terrorist attack.

“They are deployed in Sharm el-Sheikh and other airports and minimize uncontrolled activities”. About 1,500 British tourists are expected to return home from the southern Sinai city on Saturday, now that flights have resumed, according to The Guardian. Thomson said there was “no cause for concern” for further flights. “Once they (airport chiefs) hear something is coming, suddenly everything gets fixed”.

Another woman said the experience was an “absolute nightmare” and “so disorganised”. “We have left our two bags behind in a pile in the middle of the terminal, and I honestly don’t know if we will see them again”.

Mr Standen, who travelled with Thomas Cook, added: “It is the lack of information that is probably the big problem, but the airport is only going to get worse. This does not mean that all of them are Muscovites, but the Russian capital is marked as their final destination”, she said on Saturday.

Attempts to fly home thousands of British holidaymakers on Friday hit trouble when Egypt restricted the number of flights, citing capacity limits at Sharm al-Sheikh airport and British airliners’ refusal to take passenger luggage in the hold.

Fellow passenger Angela Downs, 44, said: “We left our hotel and waited in the airport for hours the other day to then be taken to a different hotel, so we’re just happy to get back”.

Egypt’s foreign ministry announced Friday that the country’s Civil Aviation Authority would hold a press conference on the plane crash on Saturday.

Five British planes, two from Metrojet, two from Monarch Airways and one from British Airlines, were also sent.

However, Egypt has stopped short of attributing the plane crash to terrorism.

Frenchmen are involved in the investigation as the crashed aircraft was manufactured by Airbus, which is based in France. In Sharm el-Sheikh, the selective use of the scanner is even more arbitrary, three officials said.

Eleven empty British airliners are on standby at Larnaca airport in Cyprus and might be used to fly home thousands of tourists stranded in Egypt’s Sharm al-Sheikh.

It comes after French air accident investigators reportedly claimed today the Russian passenger jet crash was not caused by engine failure.

“We have not dismissed any possibility but there is no hypothesis yet, before the investigations are over and a full report is ready”, Shoukry said.

“We concluded that it was not a targeted attack and was likely to be connected to routine exercises being conducted by the Egyptian military in the area at the time“, said a government spokesperson.