An Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner crashed into the Red Sea after take-off from the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh today, killing all 135 passengers and 13 crew.
A French diplomat based in Egypt said there were 135 passengers aboard, all but two of them French, and 13 Egyptian and Moroccan crew members. Many of the passengers were children on family holidays.
The Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry said the crash was caused by a technical fault on take-off and ruled out any terrorist involvement. An inquiry has now been launched.
The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 0244 GMT and crashed into deep water a few miles to the southeast.
The pilots did not report any problem and the weather was normal with good visibility, official sources said. The plane was heading for Cairo to refuel and change crew before flying on to Paris.
France's deputy transport minister said the aircraft had problems taking off and crashed while trying to turn back to the airport. "There was a problem at take-off," Dominique Bussereau told reporters at Paris's Charles de Gaulle airport, the charter flight's final destination. "It tried to turn back and it was when trying to do this that it crashed."
France today said it would send accident investigation experts to Egypt. The French Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Deputy Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier was heading to Egypt in the afternoon accompanied by experts from the Interior Ministry.
French Justice Minister Dominique Perben has also asked prosecutors to open a judicial inquiry for manslaughter. A Justice Ministry spokesman said the step did not "prejudge in any way the causes of the tragedy", but said it provided a legal framework within which French and Egyptian investigators could work together.
Egyptian military planes, helped by many small boats from nearby diving centres, launched a rescue operation in the morning. Eyewitnesses said they were finding only small pieces of wreckage but no bodies or survivors.
"There are no survivors at all," a member of the rescue team said by telephone from a boat out at sea. "There's lots of personal stuff, small bags and toys. We have collected very small pieces of the plane but the body of the plane has sunk."
The plane crashed in the Strait of Tiran, between the Sinai peninsula and Saudi Arabia, where the water is hundreds of metres deep - too deep for divers to reach the flight recording devices, diving school managers said.
French President Mr Jacques Chirac telephoned his Egyptian counterpart Mr Hosni Mubarak to obtain details of the crash and expressed his "deepest shock" at the tragedy, his office said.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is currently on holidays in Sharm el-Sheik with his family. Downing Street said Mr Blair had sent messages of condolence to President Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Mr Blair was due to meet Mr Mubarak later today and would take the opportunity to extend his condolences to the Egyptian people in person, the spokesman added.
The plane had been heading for Cairo, about 400 km (240 miles) northwest of Sharm el-Sheikh, to refuel and change the crew before flying on to Charles de Gaulle aiport in Paris.
The last major crash by an Egyptian plane took place in May 2002, when a Boeing 767 of the state airline EgyptAir crashed near Tunis airport, killing 15 people.
In October 1999, an EgyptAir Boeing 767 dived into the sea off Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 people on board.
On Christmas Day, a Beirut-bound Boeing 727 smashed into the Atlantic after take-off from Benin, killing 138 people.