Britain sent a team of security and defense experts to Sharm el-Sheikh, where thousands of British tourists are stranded by the British ban on flights. Hammond says he expects British tourists to be flown back from the resort starting Friday, after measures are taken to tighten security at the resort’s airport.
“The airline industry is indicating that they expect by tomorrow to be in a position to start bringing people out,” Hammond said.
On the ground in the Sinai, rescue teams have retrieved 140 bodies from the scene and more than 100 body parts. Russian rescue workers, combing a 40-square-kilometer area, should be finishing their search for remains and wreckage by Thursday evening, according to Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov.
Egypt has said the cockpit voice recorder of the Russian plane is partially damaged and a lot of work is required in order to extract data from it.
Grief continued to roil St. Petersburg and its suburbs as mourners brought more flowers, candles and paper planes to the city’s imperial-era square and the airport where the Metrojet flight had been due to land.
In the ancient Russian city of Veliky Novgorod, 160 kilometers (100 miles) south of St. Petersburg, the first victim of the crash was buried Thursday after a church service in a whitewashed 16th-century church overlooking the Volkhov River.
Family and friends came to say their goodbyes to Nina Lushchenko, 60, who worked in a school canteen all her life. They remembered her as a good mother and grandmother.
Her daughter told the Russian LifeNews television channel earlier this week that Lushchenko had considered taking her granddaughter with her on vacation but later decided against it.
