Last British tourists to leave Sharm el Sheikh ‘by weekend’

EFG-Hermes, one of the Middle East’s largest investment banks, also expected that the move would not boost dollar liquidity in Egypt, which faces a long-running currency crisis.

The local police have put in an urgent request for more CCTV cameras at the airport, together with a 24-hour monitoring room to keep check on the site both indoors and out.

Several countries have imposed flight bans over fears terrorists were responsible for the October 31 airplane crash in the Sinai Peninsula that killed 224 Russian tourists and crew.

An Egyptian-led 47-member investigation committee, including Russian, French and German experts, said Saturday that it was attentively considering all possible scenarios for the cause of the tragic accident, yet no conclusion was reached at the moment.

“The lights will not be going out in Sharm al-Sheikh”, Sisi told reporters in the Red Sea resort.

There was one flight on Sunday and two on Monday – of a total 11 returning to the United Kingdom that day, carrying 2,301 passengers in all. With the airport’s storage facility full, tourists are being told to leave their luggage in their hotels.

A senior Russian official said that Moscow’s decision to suspend flights was unlikely to be reversed soon. “It is an airport, not a baggage store”.

Karim ElMinabawy, president at Emeco Travel, said the situation remained unclear following the Russian plan crash in the Sinai desert.

EasyJet said on its website that all delayed passengers would be home by the end of next weekend while Monarch said the last Sharm flight would depart next Tuesday. “But we have eight countries still sending their clients because they understand Egypt is increasing security at the airport and is taking fast action”.

USA and British officials have cited intelligence reports indicating that the plane flying out of Sharm el-Sheikh was brought down by a bomb on board. “We will have nothing but a few Ukrainians and Belarusians”.

Most of the media criticism of the West skirted around the fact that Russian Federation has gone further than Britain by banning all flights to Egypt, most likely for months.

A diplomatic source quoted by CNN Sunday said the assessment is based on combined military, intelligence and security information gathered from several countries, adding that “at least some of the intelligence intercepts being used to assess what happened to the jetliner came from Israeli intelligence”.