MOSCOW: Russian president Vladimir Putin authorized the resumption of regular Russian airline flights to Cairo, according to a document published on the Moscow government’s website on Thursday.
Russia halted civilian air traffic to Egypt in October 2015 after militants detonated a bomb on a Russian Metrojet flight departing the tourist resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, killing all 224 people on board.
Putin’s clearance for flights to resume was effective from Jan. 2, the Russian government document said, though it gave no timeline for the actual resumption of service.
Egyptian airport sources said flights would resume first between Cairo and Moscow in April, then negotiations will begin about restoring flights to the Red Sea resorts of Sharm El-Sheikh and Hurghada — popular with Russian tourists.
“The resumption of flights between Russia and Cairo is a very good sign, giving hope that charter flights to the Red Sea resorts will be possible soon,” Russia’s RIA news agency quoted the head of Russia’s tour operators association, Maya Lomidze, as saying.
The 2015 bombing aboard the Metrojet airliner, claimed by Daesh, and Russia’s suspension flight service dealt heavy blows to Egypt’s tourism industry, a major source of its hard currency reserves.
Putin approves resumption of Russian airline service to Cairo
Putin approves resumption of Russian airline service to Cairo
Sudanese man jailed in UK for murdering asylum hotel worker
- Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024
- He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver
LONDON: A Sudanese asylum seeker was jailed on Friday for a minimum of 29 years for murdering a woman who worked at the hotel in central England where he and other migrants were being housed.
Anti-immigration activists have seized on other criminal cases involving asylum seekers, predominantly young men, in hotels to argue that they are a danger to nearby communities.
Last summer, a number of protests at asylum hotels across England – sparked by the arrest of an Ethiopian asylum seeker for sexually assaulting a teenage girl and a woman – turned violent.
The Labour government, nervous of the rise of the anti-immigration Reform UK party in opinion polls, has promised to clamp down on illegal immigration and, by 2029, to stop placing asylum seekers in hotels while their cases are processed.
Deng Chol Majek followed Rhiannon Whyte, 27, to a railway station in October 2024 after she finished her shift.
He stabbed her 23 times to the head, chest and arm with a screwdriver. She died in hospital three days later.
Majek was convicted in October and sentenced on Friday to life imprisonment with a minimum of 29 years at Coventry Crown Court, where some anti-immigration protesters gathered outside for the hearing.
Judge Michael Soole said the murder was “particularly vicious” and told Majek there had been a “chilling composure in every aspect of your behavior.”
