| Date: | Friday January 02, @10:12PM |
|---|---|
| Author: | ewing2001 |
| Topic: | News |
| from the Reuters dept. | |
Reuters -January 3
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying 135 mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday and eyewitnesses said they saw no sign of survivors.
The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 9:44 p.m. EST/0244 GMT and crashed in deep water to the southeast, official sources said.
There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash but Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary-General Abo Ghanima said the plane appeared to have had an accident. "Until now there is no sign of terrorism," he said.
A French diplomat based in Egypt said there were 135 passengers aboard, all but one French, and 13 Egyptian and Moroccan crew members. "We are still waiting for more details," the diplomat added.
Egyptian military planes, helped by many small boats from nearby diving centers, launched a rescue operation at dawn but the eyewitnesses said all they were finding was small pieces of wreckage and that no survivors appeared to have come ashore.
The plane crashed in the Strait of Tiran, between the Sinai peninsula and Saudi Arabia, where the water is about 3,300 feet deep.
"You can see very small pieces of wreckage. No big pieces of the plane are to be found. We have not seen any survivors brought ashore yet," said a witness who asked not to be named.
"They (the rescue teams) are saying they cannot find bodies, just parts of the planes," said Federico Valle, the manager of the diving center at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Sharm el-Sheikh.
A Flash Airlines official said: "All we know right now is that a plane disappeared two minutes after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh on its way to Cairo. The flight number was 8604."
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printed from Egyptian Plane Crashed in Red Sea on 2004-06-03 13:05:18