Heartbreaking photo 'shows father and daughter boarding doomed Russian plane'
A heartbreaking photo has emerged of a father and daughter believed to be boarding the Russian passenger plane which crashed in Egypt on Saturday.
The harrowing picture reportedly shows Iurii Shein, 38, and his three-year-old daughter Anastasiia Sheina, who are among the 224 victims of the horror crash.
The Airbus A321 with 214 Russian and three Ukranian passengers and seven crew, took off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh in south Sinai bound for Saint Petersburg on Saturday.
It lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes later and the wreckage was found roughly 100 kilometres south of the North Sinai town of El-Arish.
The photo of Mr Shein and his daughter, was posted on Russian social media website VKontake by Olga Sheina, 30, who has also been named as another victim on a manifest of passengers published by the Association of Tour Operators of Russia.
“We’re going home,” she wrote alongside the photo, which shows the pair boarding a Metrojet flight.
A second photo shows the pair on a beach, with two other children, with the Russian word for 'Egypt' and '2015' written in the sand.
The 224 victims of the horror crash ranged in age from a 10-month-old girl to a 77-year-old woman. There were 17 children on board the doomed plane.
This tragic photo is believed to show the youngest victim of the crash, 10-month-old Darina Gromova at the airport before her flight.
The photo shows the toddler gazing out through an airport window at the planes out on the tarmac.
Her parents Aleksei and Tatiana Gromova were also listed on the manifest.
Alena Moiseeva 5yr old Angel Gone too soon Her Little Soul Faithfully Departed Victim of #RussianPlane crash #Sinai pic.twitter.com/2wVx0l6RtJ
— Ozer Khalid (@OzerKhalid) October 31, 2015
A militant group affiliated with Islamic State has claimed it downed the passenger plane in the Sinai Peninsula, where the jihadists are waging an insurgency.
"The soldiers of the caliphate succeeded in bringing down a Russian plane in Sinai," said the statement circulated on social media.
Egyptian Prime Minister Sharif Ismail expressed doubt about the claim, saying "experts confirmed that a plane cannot be downed at such an altitude", and Russian Transport Minister Maksim Sokolov said the claim "cannot be considered accurate".
Germany's Lufthansa and Air France said they would halt flights over Sinai until the reasons behind the crash became clear.
The aircraft's black box had been retrieved and sent for analysis.
