Putin Suspends Russian Flights to Egypt Amid Security Fears

                            
President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular tourist destination for Russians. The move came as several airlines imposed bans on checked luggage over concerns that a bomb in a cargo hold brought down a Russian charter jet in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday, killing all 224 people on board.




                           

Mr. Putin signed off on a recommendation by Alexander Bortnikov, the director of the Federal Security Service, Russia’s internal state security agency, that the flights be suspended, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, confirmed to the Interfax news agency. It was not immediately clear when the suspension would begin.

Mr. Putin also ordered that measures be taken to ensure that the Russian tourists already in Egypt, including the resort city of Sharm el Sheikh, from which the doomed Russian jet departed, could be brought home safely.

The halting of flights was the first breach in what has largely been a wall of silence about the crash from Russian and Egyptian authorities, which have until now played down the possibility of terrorism — even as Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, and President Obama, have raised it as a possibility. Nearly all of the dead were Russian citizens.

On Friday, a growing number of airlines banned passengers from checking their bags on Sharm el Sheikh flights, including the British carriers easyJet, Thomson Airways and Monarch Airlines, which were focused on bringing thousands of stranded tourists back to Britain.

The British government said that passengers traveling from Sharm el Sheikh to Britain would be permitted only one small item of hand luggage, for “essential items” like valuables, travel documents, keys, medications, credit cards and baby supplies. The British authorities said that oversize bags, along with cargo-hold luggage, would be flown back to Britain on separate flights.

The travelers’ situation remained in a state of flux. On Friday morning, easyJet said that the Egyptian authorities had interfered with the repatriation flights, although Egyptian officials said they were cooperating, and Monarch said that departures would proceed as planned.

EasyJet said that eight scheduled flights from Sharm el Sheikh — seven bound for London and one for Milan — would not be departing, but that two other flights to the British capital would go ahead.