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Egypt Plane Crash Kills 148; Technical Fault Blamed

By Ruben Sprich
Reuters
Saturday, January 3, 2004; 7:15 AM

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 a rescue team member said there were no survivors.

"The initial indications are that it was a technical fault, but that is only preliminary," Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary-General Hassan Abo Ghanima told Reuters. He had said earlier: "There is no sign of terrorism."

The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 0244 GMT and crashed into deep water a few miles to the southeast, official sources said.

The pilots did not report any problem and the weather was normal with good visibility, official sources said. The plane was heading for Cairo to refuel, change crew and take on more passengers before flying on to Paris.

A French diplomat based in Egypt said there were 135 passengers aboard, all but one French, and 13 Egyptian and Moroccan crew members.

The crash coincided with intense U.S. concern about possible attacks involving civilian airliners, which has led to the cancellation of seven U.S.-bound flights in just over a week.

Egyptian military aircraft and ships, helped by small boats from nearby diving centers, launched a rescue operation at first light. Eyewitnesses said they were finding pieces of human bodies but no complete corpses and no survivors.

"We have half of a body here, half a body there. But we don't have any body in one piece," said a rescue worker, speaking by telephone from one of the boats.

"There's lots of personal stuff, small bags and toys. We have collected very small pieces of the plane but the body of the plane has sunk," said another rescue worker, who asked not to be named.

Yasser Imam, a spokesman for the local authorities, said: "What they have picked up so far is just fragments of bodies. The chances of finding complete bodies look slim because of the force with which the plane hit the surface of the water."

DEEP WATER

The plane crashed in the Strait of Tiran, between the Sinai peninsula and Saudi Arabia, where the water is hundreds of meters (feet) deep -- too deep for divers to reach the flight recording devices, diving school managers said.

French President Jacques Chirac telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Hosni Mubarak to obtain details of the crash and expressed his "deepest shock" at the tragedy, his office said.

Eyewitnesses in Sharm el-Sheikh said the rescue operation was concentrating on an area about half a mile off Naama Bay, the site of many large hotels.

An Egyptian armed forces C-130 transport plane and two helicopters were taking part in the search, witnesses said.

Flash Airlines is an Egyptian charter airline company based in Cairo and flying to European cities. It flew two Boeing 737-300 planes manufactured in 1993, according to its Web site.

The plane was maintained regularly in Norway and there was no sign of any mechanical fault before its last flight, the official Egyptian news agency MENA reported.

French Transport Minister Gilles de Robien went to Charles de Gaulle airport, where distraught friends and relatives of passengers on the flight were being told of the crash.

An eyewitness speaking on Egyptian television said people heard a loud noise at the time of the crash but he interpreted this as the sound of the plane hitting the water. "In the morning we were surprised by a kind of slapping noise in the sea, a very loud noise," said the unidentified witness.

Sharm el-Sheikh, a major diving resort, is considered one of the most secure places in Egypt because of its isolation and Mubarak's frequent presence. Police man checkpoints on the only paved roads into the resort and check travelers' identities.

The last major crash by an Egyptian plane took place in May 2002, when a Boeing 767 of the state airline EgyptAir crashed near Tunis airport, killing 15 people.

In October 1999, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 dived into the sea off Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 people on board.

On Christmas Day, a Beirut-bound Boeing 727 smashed into the Atlantic after take-off from Benin, killing 138 people.

© 2004 Reuters

FYI ping:

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 a rescue team member said there were no survivors.

Sharm el-Sheikh, a major diving resort

Ugh, how sad.... Would not want to go diving this weekend there.... Poor souls.

Yemeni group now claims responsibility. Says it was in protest to French ban on head scarves. To use another Freeper's expression,

JUST DAMN.

Wonder how that suits the fighting french?