Cairo, Oct 31 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro expressed “his most heartfelt condolences” to the Russian government and to the families of the victims of the plane crash Saturday in the northern Sinai Peninsula in Egypt.

The crash of the commercial jet of the Russian company Kogalymavia, widely known as Metrojet, killed the 224 people on board. There were no survivors.

President Maduro, “in the name of the Venezuelan government and people, expresses his most heartfelt condolences to the government of the Russian Federation and to the Russian people, particularly to the families and friends of the victims, for the terrible airplane accident that occurred this Saturday,” the official government note said.

“With immense sorrow he have learned of the accident that occurred during the charter flight from Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt) to St. Petersburg (Russia), in which 224 people unfortunately died,” it said.

The airliner, an Airbus A321, went down 23 minutes after takeoff, with 217 passengers and a Russian crew of seven aboard, in a remote, mountainous area to the south of Arish, the capital of North Sinai province, the Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement without providing details on the cause of the crash.

Egyptian armed forces planes detected the wreckage and ambulances were dispatched to the scene, but the Russian Embassy in Cairo confirmed on Twitter that there were no survivors.

Russia’s government had earlier said in a statement that the airliner had been completely destroyed, the Interfax agency reported.

Egyptian and Russian authorities are investigating the causes of the disaster, but dismiss the possibility that it was shot down from land, as stated by the Egyptian affiliate of the Islamic State terrorist group, which claimed responsibility for the crash. EFE