Lufthansa halts Sharm el-Sheikh flights
German airline group Lufthansa says it has cancelled weekly flights to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
The precautionary measure points to concerns that a bomb may have caused a Russian passenger plane to crash in the area over the weekend, killing all 224 people onboard.
A spokesman said Lufthansa's budget arm Eurowings had a weekly flight from Cologne/Bonn to Sharm el-Sheikh, while another unit, Edelweiss Air, flies there and back from Zurich, Switzerland. Both were suspended, DPA reported.
Lufthansa said it will now work with the foreign office and tour operators on bringing passengers back from Sharm al-Sheikh.
Lufthansa's airlines have been avoiding the Sinai peninsula air space since Saturday. Flights to Cairo are unaffected by the measure.
Britain said on Thursday there was a significant possibility that the Egyptian affiliate of the ISIL was behind a suspected bomb attack on a Russian airliner that killed 224 people in the Sinai Peninsula and banned flights to and from Sharm al-Sheikh while airport security measures are improved.
On Wednesday, British Prime Minister David Cameron cited intelligence reports saying "more likely than not that it was a terrorist bomb" that caused the deadly crash.
In response to the flight cancelations to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt's Tourism Minister Hesham Zaazou criticized Britain's decision to suspend flights. "The decision is unjustified and carries a lot of question marks," he remarked to the state news agency MENA.
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