224 dead, no survivors after Russian plane crash in Egypt

All 224 people aboard a Russian airplane that crashed in Eygpt are dead, authorities announced Saturday.

Russian president Vladimir Putin declared a day of mourning and said his country would investigate after it emerged that nobody had survived the crash in the Sinai Peninsula.

Kogalymavia Flight 7K9268 contained almost all Russian passengers who were traveling from the resort town of Sharm-el-Sheik to St. Petersburg. The chartered Airbus plane was 23 minutes into its journey when it went off the grid.

Images from the scene showed that the plane was completely destroyed on impact.

In a statement, Airbus said that the plane had been in operation since 1997 and had logged “some 56,000 flight hours in nearly 21,000 flights.”

Kogalymavia said that it did not think human error was to blame for the crash, and officials in both Russia and Egypt said technical glitches were likely the cause of the disaster. In a somewhat surprising twist, ISIS claimed responsibility for the crash, but authorities were quick to reject this assertion.