Egyptian military planes spot wreckage of Russian plane that crashed in Sinai

The captain of the Kogalymavia Airbus A-32 plane, with 224 people on board, that crashed in central Sinai on Saturday told Cyprus air traffic control that the jet had a technical fault and asked for a change of route

The Telegraph reports that Egyptian military planes have found the wreckage of the 18-year-old Russian jet which left Sharm el-Sheik, a resort in the Red Sea area, for St. Petersburg in Russia. Flight Radar 24, an air traffic monitoring website, tweeted that the plane was descending at about 6,000 feet per minute when it lost contact with the control tower.

Russian aviation authority Rosaviatsiya said that Flight 9268 left the Egyptian airport at 6:51am Moscow time. It was slated to arrive at the Pulkovo Airport in St. Petersburg at 12:10pm but lost contact with the Cyprus air traffic control tower just 23 minutes after leaving, and disappeared from the radar.

The majority of the passengers are Russian tourists, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail cancelled a trip to Ismailiya and formed a cabinet-level crisis committee tasked with dealing with the air tragedy.

CNN reports that with the confirmation of the crash, the Northern Sinai medical department deployed over 20 ambulances to the crash site as part of its declaration of a state of emergency. The crash site, a mountainous area in South Arish, is between the villages of Al-Kuntilah and Al-Kaseema in central Sinai.

The Egyptian cabinet said 45 ambulances have been deployed to the site to evacuate the dead and wounded. According to rescue workers, because the plane is almost completely destroyed, the chances of any survivors is low.

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