Putin Suspends Flights From Russia to Egypt Amid Security Fears

MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular foreign tourist destination for Russians, until the cause of a mysterious plane crash that killed 224 people over the Sinai Peninsula can be established.

Mr. Putin’s decision was the first breach in what has largely been a consistent response from Russian and Egyptian authorities to the crash on Saturday. Until now, the two countries have been playing down the possibility of terrorism — even as Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain said it was likely a bomb and President Obama said “we are taking that very seriously.”

A Kremlin spokesman said that Mr. Putin’s decision did not mean that the crash was caused by a terrorist act. Mr. Putin ordered that measures be taken to ensure that the roughly 45,000 Russian tourists already in Egypt could be brought home safely.

 Samples from the wreckage from the crash site in the Sinai Peninsula have been taken to Moscow for examination.

“Russian specialists have collected swabs and scrapes from all fragments of the aircraft, luggage and soil,” the Russian minister for emergency situations, Vladimir Puchkov, said in remarks broadcast on national television. “The necessary samples have been taken from all items which might contain traces of explosives. All these samples have been delivered to Moscow and are being thoroughly examined now.”

The Russian government has not ignored the theory that the plane was felled by a bomb, but it has certainly played it down, and Mr. Putin had admonished other leaders for jumping to conclusions before investigators had analyzed all the data.

Russian officials did not say whether its decision to suspend flights was based on new information from the investigation. They said only that the safety of Russian citizens was paramount. With other countries banning flights and taking extraordinary measures to get people out of Sharm el Sheikh, Moscow made the move to match those efforts in case the crash does turn out to have been caused by a deliberate explosion.

According to a European official who has been briefed on the crash investigation, the cockpit voice recorder captured a sound aboard the Russian jet that was thought to be an explosion. Investigators are trying to confirm if the timing of the sound corresponds with the abrupt end of the flight data recorder.

More than 25 flights a day travel to Egypt from Russia, according to the Russian Tour Operators Association.

On Friday, a day after announcing that it would resume flights to Sharm el Sheikh to bring roughly 20,000 of its citizens home, , the British government said it was trying to do so with heightened security measures in place.

“This is a hugely complex operation,” the prime minister’s office said in a statement. “We continue to work closely with both the Egyptian authorities and the airline carriers to get people safely home as quickly as possible, “but the sheer scale of the task poses a number of logistical complexities.”

Frustrated tourists at the airport in the Red Sea resort city heckled John Casson, the British ambassador to Egypt.

Russian officials said a command center had been set up in Moscow with the government agencies involved in figuring out how to repatriate Russians from Egypt.

Tour operators anticipated some resistance from tourists being hauled off the beach and back to their chilly homeland before their vacations were up. It might require an official evacuation order, they said.

“We are in contact with tour operators and tourist agencies to prevent panic, to coordinate the work between all the organizations involved,” Aleksandr Osaulenko, one senior tourism official, told Russian news agencies. “Right now we are collecting information about the cities where Russians are, how many, how they can be transported, etc.”

Anna Podgornaya, director of Pegas, a major Russian tour operator, said that in 2011 and 2013 the Russian government ordered its citizens repatriated because of violence surrounding the political upheaval in Egypt.

“At the time, we had to persuade people to leave,” Ms. Podgornaya said. “This was difficult, some would refuse to go despite anything.”

The Russian government announced a tentative plan on Friday to bring citizens home as close as possible to their scheduled return dates.

The authorities in London have been working with a number of British airlines — easyJet, Thomson Airways and Monarch Airlines — to bring British citizens home from the Sinai Peninsula. The British government had said that passengers traveling from Sharm el Sheikh to Britain would be permitted only one small carry-on bag, for “essential items.”

On Friday morning, easyJet said that the Egyptian authorities had interfered with the repatriation flights, although Egyptian officials said they were cooperating, and Monarch said that departures would proceed as planned.

Only a few flights appear to have made it from Sharm el Sheikh to Britain; about 4,000 British citizens were expected to return on Friday, according to British news reports.

Hossam Kamal, the Egyptian minister of civil aviation, said in a statement on Friday that Egypt was working with Britain, although he cautioned that the effort would be done “in the light of the resources of the airport and in accordance with international security regulations.” He said eight flights would leave for Britain rather than the originally scheduled 29.

An official at the Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk on behalf of the ministry, called the easyJet account “not correct,” saying the decision to limit flights was a matter of capacity and “organizational procedures.”

Betraying annoyance at the decision by British carriers to restrict checked baggage, Mr. Kamal said in his statement that the decision would only worsen the situation at the Sharm el Sheikh airport because it did not have room for the more than 120 tons of luggage that would be left behind.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on Friday that it would take unspecified precautionary measures to enhance the security of flights to the United States from the Middle East.

“While there are no direct commercial air flights from Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to the United States, these enhancements are designed to provide an additional layer of security for the traveling public, and will be undertaken in consultation with relevant foreign governments and relevant passenger and cargo airlines,” Jeh C. Johnson, the secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said.

The cause of the crash of the Russian jet, which could be the result of an explosive on board, a catastrophic mechanical failure, human error or an accidental explosion of fuel, remains a mystery.

An affiliate of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the crash, and Mr. Obama’s comments were the first direct statement by the president that the crash might have been caused by something other than a technical malfunction.

In London on Thursday, Mr. Cameron was more emphatic about the cause, saying that it was “more likely than not a terrorist bomb” that had brought down the plane.

Egyptian officials have said that the suggestion that a bomb had brought down the plane was not based on facts from their investigation.