SAINT PETERSBURG: Flags flew at half-mast in Russia on Sunday as the country mourned its worst air disaster after a jetliner full of Russian tourists crashed in Egypt, killing all 224 on board.

The flight had been bringing holidaymakers back to Saint Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, when it disappeared off radar screens while over the Sinai peninsula.

“Can you imagine, people came (here) to pick up their children, grandchildren, only to find out that they no longer exist,” said Galina Grigoryeva, 34, one of many people who brought flowers to a makeshift memorial near the arrivals area at Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport.

“When I found out about this, I just cried,” she said, her five-year-old in tow with a cuddly toy for the memorial to honour the children who died, some as young as 10 months. At nightfall, several thousand people gathered in a circle in St. Petersburg’s Palace Square, in front of the Hermitage Museum, where they observed a minute’s silence and release doves and balloons to the darkening sky.

“It was impossible for me not to come,” said Nika Kletskikh, 27, who lost a friend in the crash.

“It’s so awful to think that she’s no longer there”. Flags were at half-mast on the parliament building, in the Kremlin, and on other official buildings in honour of the victims, most of whom were from Saint Petersburg and its surrounding region.

Authorities set up a crisis centre at a hotel near the airport where relatives of the victims were invited to provide DNA samples and psychologists were on call.

Russia’s state-owned rolling news channel Rossiya 24 periodically interrupted coverage with moments of silence and flashed photos of smiling crash victims apparently taken on their holiday and posted on social networks.

Some people had been on their first foreign holiday, some had never flown before, and one couple was on their honeymoon, the channel said.

“Many of us could have been on this plane, and this tragedy cannot leave any of us indifferent,” Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church said as he led one of religious services held Sunday in the victims’ memory.

Many entertainment venues in Moscow cancelled their programmes, and companies planning Halloween events overnight had dropped the festivities.

Media organisations turned their social network icons monochrome as a mark of respect.

Published in Dawn, November 2nd, 2015

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