Egypt's government says 15 bodies have been recovered and transferred to a morgue from the site of a Russian passenger plane crash in the Sinai Peninsula.
Prime Minister Ismail Sharif went to an airport at the edge of the peninsula from where "15 bodies were airlifted to the Zeinhom morgue in Cairo", the government said in a statement on Saturday.
The head of Egypt's civil aviation authority had said there were "many" dead including 17 children after the plane carrying 224 people crashed.
The chartered passenger plane had taken off from the south Sinai resort of Sharm el-Sheikh bound for Saint Petersburg and lost contact with air traffic control 23 minutes later.
Ambulances reached the site of the crash, in a remote mountainous area in the middle of the peninsula, and began evacuating "casualties," officials and state media reported.
The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Moscow's emergency ministry to dispatch rescue teams to Egypt.
The wreckage was found roughly 100km south of the North Sinai town of El-Arish, Egyptian officials said.
