Al-anwar Newspaper English news in Australia
CAIRO —
Russian flights to Egypt will resume soon, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi in a phone call, Sissi’s office said on Thursday.
Flights to Egypt from Russia were suspended after a Russian plane crashed into the Sinai desert in October 2015. Islamic State said it brought down the plane with a bomb smuggled inside a soda can.
“President Putin affirmed Russia’s intention to resume regular flights between Moscow and Cairo in the very near future,” the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.
No date was given for flights to resume.
The Airbus A321, operated by Metrojet, had been returning Russian holiday makers from the Egyptian Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg. The crash killed all 224 on board.
Russia and Western governments said a bomb had brought the plane down and Sissi later said the cause was terrorism.
Investigators have yet to confirm this.
Britain suspended flights to Sharm el-Sheikh as a result, and Russia suspended all flights to and from Egypt, devastating Egyptian tourism, a lifeline for the country’s already battered economy.
