Russian search and rescue team leaves Egypt after crash work

“They are not going to come back again”. But he noted that Israel is not involved in the investigation and said his opinion was based on “what we hear and understand”.

Moscow has banned all flights to Egypt for at least several months, a severe blow for the tourism industry during the peak season for Russian visitors.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi pledged a transparent probe into the Russian plane crash and cautioned against hasty conclusions, during a visit Wednesday to the airport from where the doomed aircraft took off.

“Our visit today aims to reassure people inside and outside Egypt”, el-Sissi said after greeting a few foreign tourists and wading through a packed terminal.

“We are endeavouring to process as many people as possible through the airport as safely and quickly as we can”, it said.

The biggest disaster in the history of Russian and Soviet aviation happened on October 31: Airbus A321 airliner airlines of “Kogalymavia airlines, which was flying from Sharm el Sheikh to St. Petersburg crashed in the Sinai”. Most of the passengers were Russian tourists returning home.

Zaazou said Russian and British holidaymakers accounted for two-thirds of tourist traffic to Sharm al-Sheikh, while Russians alone made up half the tourists in Egypt’s other main Red Sea destination, Hurghada.

Moscow has said its ban on flights is necessary because of concerns about security at Egypt’s airports.

The Emergency Situations Ministry said in a statement that the authorities will also be bringing over 130 tons of the tourists’ luggage on four cargo planes on Monday. “For how long – I can not really say, but I think that for several months, minimum”, Sergei Ivanov, the head of the presidential administration, was quoted as saying by RIA news agency on Tuesday.