A Russian plane carrying more than 200 passengers from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh has crashed in central Sinai with all on board feared dead.
A security officer from the search and rescue team dispatched to the scene said the Russian airline Kogalymavia, known as Metrojet, was “completely destroyed with all on board likely to have died”.
The plane was destined for St Petersburg, with 217 passengers – including seven children – and an additional seven crew onboard.
The crash site was found on Saturday morning in southern Arish, a mountainous area of central Sinai, but poor weather conditions are making it difficult for rescue crews to get to the scene, the security officer said.
There were no indications the plane was shot down, Egyptian security sources told Reuters. Northern Sinai is home to groups of Islamist militants, many affiliated to Islamic State.
A statement from the prime minister’s office said Sherif Ismail had formed a cabinet-level crisis committee to deal with the crash.
The plane lost contact 23 minutes into the flight, according to the plane tracker website Flight Radar. Data from Flight Radar showed the aircraft had made a steep descent at a rate of 6,000 feet per minute shortly before signal was lost.
Russia’s aviation authority, Rosaviatsiya, said the flight had left at 03:51 GMT and was due into St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport at 12:10, it told TASS news agency. The plane had failed to make scheduled contact with Cyprus air traffic control and disappeared from the radar.
The Rosaviatsiya spokesman Sergey Izvolsky said: “According to preliminary reports, the Airbus A320 belonging to Kagalymavia, en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg has taken off at 6.51am Moscow time.
“At 7.14am it failed to contact Larnaca [in Cyprus] and disappeared from radars. The plane carried 212 passengers and seven crew members.”
The Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh is a popular destination for Russian tourists.