11,000 Russians brought back from Egypt

Russia says it has flown 11,000 tourists home from Egypt in the past 24 hours, and more will return on Sunday.

Moscow announced on Friday that it was suspending all flights to Egypt after a Russian plane crashed in Sinai - having initially dismissed suspicions that a bomb brought down the jet.

Dozens of special flights were put on for tourists wanting to go home.

A remembrance service is being held in St Petersburg for the crash's 224 victims, most of whom were Russian.

The UK has flown 3,500 travellers out of Sharm el-Sheikh, from where Metrojet Flight 9268 took off for St Petersburg on 31 October.

The UK halted flights to and from the resort on Wednesday, citing intelligence concerns that the Airbus may have been downed by a bomb.

Russia criticised the UK decision - but then on Friday announced it was stopping flights to all of Egypt.

Tourists walk at the walking area of Naama bay in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Russians make up about a third of all foreign visitors to Egypt. Photo: Reuters

Russians make up close to one in three of all foreign tourists in Egypt, most of them holidaymakers visiting the resorts such as Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada.

Officials said there were about 80,000 Russian tourists in Egypt when Moscow took the decision to stop flights.

Holidaymakers were flown back without hold luggage, mirroring the restrictions placed on British tourists being repatriated.

The British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said the delays to flights for Britons stranded in the Red Sea resort were caused by the much higher level of security checking being imposed.

"We are running up against the capacity limits of the airport given the additional measures that are being applied and that's what's causing the delay to some flights," he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Programme.

At most, people will experience a delay of two or three days, he added.

The Egyptian head of the international team investigating the crash, Ayman al-Muqaddam, said it was too early to say what caused the plane to break up in mid-air.

Muqaddam said that a noise could be heard in the last moments of the recording of the plane's cockpit voice recorder, but a detailed analysis of the sound had yet to be carried out.

Militants in the Sinai Peninsula affiliated to Islamic State have claimed that they brought down the airliner, but they have not said how.