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Russian Flights to Egypt Will Resume Soon, Putin Tells Sissi


FILE - An empty arrival hall is seen at the Sharm el-Sheikh Airport in south Sinai, Egypt, Nov. 9, 2015. After an October 2015 crash of a Russian passenger jet on the Sinai Peninsula that left 224 people dead Russia is resume flights to Egypt, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi announced Thursday.
FILE - An empty arrival hall is seen at the Sharm el-Sheikh Airport in south Sinai, Egypt, Nov. 9, 2015. After an October 2015 crash of a Russian passenger jet on the Sinai Peninsula that left 224 people dead Russia is resume flights to Egypt, President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi announced Thursday.

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.

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    Reuters

    Reuters is a news agency founded in 1851 and owned by the Thomson Reuters Corporation based in Toronto, Canada. One of the world's largest wire services, it provides financial news as well as international coverage in over 16 languages to more than 1000 newspapers and 750 broadcasters around the globe.

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