Foreign experts in Egypt to probe Russian airliner crash

A delegation of foreign experts arrived in Cairo on Monday to inspect the wreckage of a Metrojet plane downed over Sinai, hoping to pinpoint how it came apart, the aviation ministry said.

The wreckage has been transported to Cairo airport and will be pieced together "to determine the starting point for the (plane's) disintegration", the ministry said in a statement.

Russia and other countries had suspended commercial flights to Egypt after the Islamic State group (IS) claimed responsibility for bombing the plane carrying Russian holidaymakers in October 2015, killing all 224 people on board.

IS has claimed it smuggled a bomb inside a soda can onto the plane in a Sinai resort airport, in response to Russian airstrikes in Syria.

The delegation, which includes experts from Russia, Germany, France, and Ireland, is also expected to inspect security measures at Egyptian airports, amid expectation of a resumption of Russian commercial flights to Egypt in October.

On Saturday, Egypt's civil aviation minister Sherif Fathy confirmed to local website Ahram Online reports by Russian media that Egypt was willing to allocate special terminals for Russian tourists if their numbers reached a certain level.

"If the Russian tourists reach a certain number, let's say three or four million, we can allocate a terminal for them," he said.

The bombing has dealt a severe blow to Egypt's already ailing tourism industry, which used to be one of its major sources of income.

If the Russian tourists reach a certain number, let's say three or four million, we can allocate a terminal for them. - Aviation minister Sherif Fathy

Russian tourists constituted 20 percent of the nine million tourists who visited Egypt in the first nine months of 2015 before the crash, according to official data.

The number of tourists coming to Egypt dropped by 50 percent in the first half of 2016, compared to the same period last year, according to Egypt's Tourism Authority.

Tourism revenues during that period witnessed a drop of 60 percent compared to 2015.

Turkey has announced that flights between Turkey and Sharm al-Sheikh would resume in September.

Poland already resumed flights in early August, while Germany decided last May to ease restrictions on flights between its airports and Sharm al-Sheikh.

Egypt was hit by another aviation disaster in May this year when an Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo went down in the Mediterranean. All 66 people on board were killed.

Investigators said the black boxes and the wreckage pointed to a fire on board, but they have not yet announced the cause of the crash.

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Agencies contributed to this report.