Flight recorders show crashed Russian jet not struck from outside

A truck carring the bodies of victims of a Russian airliner, which crashed in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, drives from Pulkovo airport in St. Petersburg, Russia November 2, 2015. The first bodies from a plane crash in Egypt in which all 224 passengers, most of them Russians, died over the weekend arrived in St Petersburg early on Monday morning aboard a Russian government plane. [Photo/Agencies]

CAIRO/MOSCOW - The Russian plane that crashed in Egypt was not struck from the outside and the pilot did not make a distress call before it disappeared from radar, a source in the committee analysing the flight recorders said on Monday.

The source declined to give more details but based his comments on the preliminary examination of the black boxes recovered from the Airbus A321 which crashed in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday killing all 224 people on board.

The Egyptian government said the black boxes were being examined by Egyptian and Russian experts along with German and French specialists from Airbus and from Ireland where the aircraft was registered. It said the search was continuing across the 9-sq-km crash site. Security sources said intelligence agencies had obtained a copy of the passenger list.

Russian officials have said the plane, carrying holidaymakers from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg, likely broke up in mid-air but said it was too early to say what caused it to crash.

The first bodies recovered from the wreckage arrived on board a Russian government plane at St Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport, where grieving Russians left piles of flowers.

A Reuters photographer saw a white lorry leaving the airport, escorted by police cars, heading for a St Petersburg morgue, where the bodies were to be identified. Egypt said the plane was carrying 196 bodies. A second plane was due to leave Cairo on Monday evening.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had declared Sunday a day of mourning, said on Monday the crash was a great tragedy.