CAIRO Egypt has found and obtained both black boxes from a Russian passenger plane that crashed in the country's Sinai peninsula on Saturday, the civil aviation minister told a news conference.

There are normally two black boxes on an aircraft, one for cockpit voice recordings and one for flight data. Egyptian authorities had earlier said they only found one.

(Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; Editing by Alison Williams)

CAIRO Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said on Saturday it was impossible to determine the cause of the Russian plane crash until the black box was examined but that no "irregular" activities were believed to be behind it.

Ismail said in a news conference that the chances of finding survivors were now near-impossible and that a Russian team would arrive in Egypt on Saturday evening. Egypt was also preparing to receive the families of the victims and 129 bodies had been recovered so far.

(Reporting by Lin Noueihed; Editing by Alison Williams)

ISMAILIA, Egypt/CAIRO A Russian airliner carrying 224 passengers crashed into a mountainous area of Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Saturday shortly after losing radar contact near cruising altitude, killing all aboard.

A militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt, Sinai Province, said in a statement it had brought down the plane "in response to Russian airstrikes that killed hundreds of Muslims on Syrian land", but Russia's Transport Minister told Interfax news agency the claim "can't be considered accurate".

The Airbus A321, operated by Russian airline Kogalymavia under the brand name Metrojet, was flying from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh to St Petersburg in Russia when it went down in central Sinai soon after daybreak, the aviation ministry said.

"I now see a tragic scene," an Egyptian security officer at the site told Reuters by telephone. "A lot of dead on the ground and many who died whilst strapped to their seats.

"The plane split into two, a small part on the tail end that burned and a larger part that crashed into a rockface. We have extracted at least 100 bodies and the rest are still inside," the officer, who requested anonymity, said.

Egyptian and Russian authorities said it was too early to draw any conclusions about the cause of the crash.

Bodies were being removed from the scene and transported to various hospitals with 34 arriving in the Zeinhom morgue in Cairo early in the evening.

Islamic State, in a statement on Twitter, said it had brought down the aircraft. "You who kill will be killed."

Russia, an ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, launched air raids against opposition groups in Syria including Islamic State on Sept. 30.

Security sources said they had no indication the Airbus had been shot down or blown up. But in an illustration of sensitivity of the crash, Egypt invited Russian authorities to take part in the investigation.

Sinai is the scene of an insurgency by militants close to Islamic State, who have killed hundreds of Egyptian soldiers and police and have also attacked Western targets in recent months. Much of the Sinai is a restricted military zone.

Islamist fighters in Sinai are not believed to have missiles capable of hitting a plane at 30,000 feet. Islamic State websites have in the past claimed responsibility for actions that have not been conclusively attributed to them.

TELEPHONES RINGING

But two of Europe's largest airlines, German carrier Lufthansa and Air France-KLM, said they would avoid flying over the Sinai pensinsula until there was clarity about the cause of the crash.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a day of national mourning for Sunday. The passengers included 214 Russians and three Ukrainians.

A middle-aged man in a grey overcoat, who gave his first name as Nayeel, wept as he spoke to reporters as he came out of a hotel near St Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport, where a special reception centre has been set up for families of the victims.

He said that his wife had been on the plane.

“At six am she sent me a text message saying: I’m boarding. God be with me.’ And that was it,” he said. The man said the rest of the family had already returned from a holiday in Egypt, but his wife had opted to stay on, which is why she was on the Saturday morning flight.

The A321 is a medium-haul jet in service since 1994, with over 1,100 in operation worldwide and a good safety record. It is a highly automated aircraft relying on computers to help pilots stay within safe flying limits.

Airbus said the A321 was built in 1997 and had been operated by Metrojet since 2012. It had flown 56,000 hours in nearly 21,000 flights and was powered by engines from International Aero Engines consortium, which includes United Technologies unit Pratt & Whitney and Germany's MTU Aero Engines.

Emergency services and aviation specialists searched the wreckage for any clues to the crash. One of two flight recorders, key to any investigation, was quickly found, but wreckage was scattered over a wide area.

The security officer said 120 bodies had been found intact.

“We are hearing a lot of telephones ringing, most likely belonging to the victims, and security forces are collecting them and putting them into a bag,” he said.

Russia's Investigative Committee said it was checking fuel samples from the aircraft's last refueling stop, in the southern Russian city of Samara, according to RIA news agency. Searches were being carried out at Moscow's Domodedovo airport where the airline that operated the plane is based.

Kogalymavia was founded in 1993, and was earlier called Kolavia. Its fleet consists of two A320s and seven A321s.

Russia and other former Soviet republics have relatively poor safety records, notably on domestic flights.

Some Russian air crashes have been blamed on the use of ageing aircraft, but industry experts point to other problems, including poor crew training, crumbling airports, lax government controls and neglect of safety in the pursuit of profits.

The aircraft took off at 5:51 a.m. Cairo time (0351 GMT) and disappeared from radar screens 23 minutes later, Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement. It was at an altitude of 31,000 feet (9,400 metres) when it vanished from radar screens.

Accidents at cruising altitude are one of the rarest categories of accidents but also among the most deadly, accounting for 13 percent of fatal incidents but 27 percent of fatalities since 2005, according to Boeing.

Investigators would be looking into, among other things, the weather at the time, the pilots' experience, maintenance records, signs of a stall and any evidence of an explosion.

Experts consistently warn air accidents are usually caused by a cocktail of factors, both human and technical.

According to FlightRadar24, an authoritative Sweden-based flight tracking service, the aircraft was descending rapidly at about 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) per minute when the signal was lost to air traffic control.

(Additional reporting by Ehab Farouk, Jason Bush in Moscow, Tim Hepher in Paris; Writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Ralph Boulton)

GENEVA U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and International Committee of the Red Cross President Peter Maurer made what they called an "unprecedented joint warning" on Saturday for states to stop conflicts, respect international law and aid refugees.

"In the face of blatant inhumanity, the world has responded with disturbing paralysis," they said in a statement. "This flouts the very raison d’etre of the United Nations."

They also called for states to rein in armed groups and hold them accountable for abuses, and to stop the use of heavy weapons in populated areas.

The United Nations is struggling with an unprecedented array of conflicts and crises, with 60 million people made homeless, record demand for humanitarian aid, and little sign of peace talks bringing a swift end to wars in Libya, Syria or Yemen.

International law was being flouted on a global scale, and the international community was failing to prosecute wrongdoers, Ban told a news conference.

"These violations have become so routine there is a risk people will think that the deliberate bombing of civilians, the targeting of humanitarian and healthcare workers, and attacks on schools, hospitals and places of worship are an inevitable result of conflict," he said.

"Enough is enough. Even war has rules. It is time to enforce them," Ban said.

Maurer said the world had entered a new era, and not a peaceful one, with combatants ignoring the most fundamental rules of behaviour in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Nigeria, South Sudan, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.

"Every day, we hear of civilians being killed and wounded in violation of the basic rules of international humanitarian law, and with total impunity. Instability is spreading. Suffering is growing. No country can remain untouched,” he said.

If governments failed to live up to their responsibilities, there would be millions more victims, he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Toby Chopra)

BEIRUT At least 64 people, including 28 children, have been killed by Syrian army and Russian air raids in the northern province of Aleppo in the past 24 hours, a group monitoring the war said on Saturday.

The raids hit Aleppo city and a number of towns and villages elsewhere in the province, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, as Syrian government forces backed by Russian air cover intensified bombardments against insurgents throughout the country.

(Reporting by John Davison, editing by David Evans)

GENEVA Disagreements over the fate of President Bashar al-Assad should not hold up a humanitarian ceasefire or a wider deal to end the war in Syria, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday.

Ban spoke after issuing a call with the head of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Peter Maurer, for states to stand up for international law and stop wars.

He said Syrian government forces had clearly broken international law by deliberately targeting civilians, including with air strikes on besieged areas and a government missile attack on a market on Friday, which medical workers said killed at least 70.

"I believe that the future of Syria, or the future of all these peace talks, the Syrian-led negotiation, should not be held up by an issue of the future of one man," Ban told a news conference in Geneva.

"Basically I believe that it is up to the Syrian people who have to decide the future of President Assad."

Ban's remarks came the day after 17 countries, the European Union and the United Nations met in Vienna and proposed a nationwide truce in Syria's civil war.

He said the Vienna meeting was the first time that "all the countries that hold the key to a resolution" had been present.

"While I know that substantial differences still remain, I hope that in the coming days and weeks they will be able to make further progress towards a Syrian-led political solution to the crisis," he said.

The Vienna meeting discussed Assad's fate, but focused more on restarting the process of peace talks, he said.

The United Nations was ready to help implement a ceasefire, which was the most pressing need, and to launch a political process leading to "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance, followed by a new constitution and elections."

"In that course I believe that the future of President Assad will be decided," he said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

BISHKEK A decision by U.S. President Barack Obama to send special forces to Syria is strictly focused on fighting Islamic State insurgents and does not signify the United States is entering the civil war there, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said.

"President Obama has made a very strong and forceful and simple decision entirely in keeping with his originally stated policy that we must defeat and destroy Daesh," Kerry said, using the Arabic term for Islamic State.

"It is not a decision to enter into Syria's civil war. It is not an action focused on (Syrian President Bashar) Assad, it focused exclusively on Daesh and in augmenting our ability to rapidly attack Daesh," Kerry told a news briefing during a visit to Kyrgyzstan's capital, Bishkek.

Asked about the prospect of the United States sending more troops, or getting drawn deeper into the conflict, Kerry said: "I can’t predict what the future will bring when our policy is to destroy Daesh, to fight back against this evil. But I do think the president has made a judgment that I completely advocated for and concur (with)."

The White House announced on Friday that dozens of special operations troops will be deployed to northern Syria to advise opposition forces in their fight against Islamic State, which is also known by the acronym ISIL.

The decision marked a policy shift for Obama, who has long resisted sending troops to avoid getting sucked into another war in the Middle East.

Kerry, at the start of a tour of the five ex-Soviet republics in Central Asia, described Islamic State, as "a destroyer and it is threatening to take actions against America, Canada and Mexico, against countries all around the world. So ISIL is a... threat that we have to respond to."

Kerry is in the region in part to reassure governments that are anxious about the threat from Islamist militants, especially those operating in nearby Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official who briefed reporters on the trip.

Kyrgyzstan's acting foreign minister, Erlan Abdyldayev, said at the news briefing with Kerry that his government was concerned about instability in northern Afghanistan.

He said the subject would be discussed when, later in his tour, Kerry meets foreign ministers from the five central Asian states in the Uzbek city of Samarkand.

(Additional reporting by Olga Dzyubenko in BISHKEK and Olzhas Auyezov in ALMATY; Writing by Christian Lowe; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

JERUSALEM Israeli security forces shot and killed a Palestinian who ran at them with a knife in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, police said, as a month-long wave of violence showed no signs of abating.

An Israeli police spokeswoman said that at a checkpoint in the northern West Bank a Palestinian holding a knife ran toward a security officer who called on him to stop.

"When he did not heed those calls the security man shot toward him in order to neutralise him and as a result the terrorist was killed," spokeswoman Luba Samri said. Palestinian medical officials said he was 18-years-old.

This month's surge in violence, the worst since the 2014 Gaza war, arose in part from religious and political tensions over the al-Aqsa mosque compound in Jerusalem's walled Old City that is sacred to both Muslims and Jews.

A growing number of visits by religious Jews to the al-Aqsa plaza - Islam's holiest site outside Saudi Arabia and revered in Judaism as the location of two destroyed biblical temples - have stirred Palestinian allegations that Israel is violating a "status quo" under which non-Muslim prayer there is banned.

Israel says such allegations are false and that their voicing by Palestinian officials and circulation in Arab social media has been inciting the violence.

Since the latest unrest began on Oct. 1, at least 65 Palestinians have been shot dead by Israelis. Of those, 38 were assailants armed mainly with knives, Israel said, while others were shot during violent anti-Israel protests. Many were teens.

Eleven Israelis have been killed in stabbings and shootings.

Many Palestinians are also frustrated by the failure of numerous rounds of peace talks to secure them an independent state in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, territories Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East War.

On Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said an eight-month-old baby had died in a West Bank village as result of inhaling teargas fired by the Israeli military in the area. Hospital officials told Reuters the infant had a prior health condition and that it was unclear what had caused his death.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said forces confronted with stone-throwing Palestinians had used teargas in the area, but that it was fired dozens of meters away from the home of the family and that an investigation concluded there to be no direct link to the baby's death.

Palestinians say Israeli police and soldiers are using excessive force, while Israel says lethal force is justified against deadly threats.

On Saturday Israeli police said it had looked into footage which has surfaced on social media, appearing to show a paramilitary police officer shooting a wounded Palestinian lying on the ground, after he had carried out a stabbing attack in the West Bank city of Hebron on Thursday. Reuters was unable to independently verify the video.

A police statement said the Palestinian had just stabbed a soldier and that the officer seen in the footage told him not to move. When he appeared to be moving toward him, the officer concluded the man could still be a threat, possibly strapping an explosive device or carrying another weapon and shot him again.

In a separate incident, an Israeli paramilitary police officer was suspended from duty, Israeli Border Police said, after he had driven through a West Bank refugee camp and over loudspeakers said: "If you keep throwing stones at us we will shoot gas at you until you die."

(Reporting by Ali Sawafta and Maayan Lubell; Writing by Maayan Lubell; Editing by Toby Chopra and Clelia Oziel)

BEIRUT International medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Saturday that at least 70 people had been killed in a missile attack on a marketplace near Damascus the day before.

A monitoring group, which had put the toll at 57, said bombardments continued in the area, and that another six people were killed by government air strikes on Saturday morning.

The bombardments came as air raids by Syrian government forces and Russian warplanes intensified across the country.

Moscow's month-old military intervention in support of President Bashar al-Assad has alarmed the United States and its allies, as world powers step up diplomatic efforts to end the war.

Syrian government forces fired missiles into a marketplace in the town of Douma northeast of Damascus on Friday in the bloodiest attack on the area for weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

MSF said a strike on a hospital on Thursday, which itself had killed 15 people, caused damage to medical facilities that made it difficult for paramedics to treat the wounded from the marketplace bombing the following day.

"MSF fears the intensification of bombing that has been seen in northern and central Syria over the course of October could become even more horrific if it spreads to besieged areas around Damascus, where almost a million people are trapped," it said in a statement.

On Saturday, at least 15 air strikes hit the area, the Observatory said.

Syria's four-year-old conflict has killed an estimated 250,000 people and driven more than 11 million from their homes.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

BEIRUT A newly formed U.S.-backed Syrian rebel alliance on Saturday launched an offensive against Islamic State in the northeast province of Hasaka, a day after the United States said it would send special forces to advise insurgents fighting the jihadists.

It was the first declared operation by the Democratic Forces of Syria, which joins together a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia and several Syrian Arab rebel groups, since it announced its formation earlier this month.

World powers and regional rivals are convening in Vienna to seek a solution to the four-year conflict in Syria that has escalated since Russia intervened a month ago with an intense air campaign.

Fighting in Hasaka had begun after midnight, a spokesman for the alliance said. A group monitoring the war reported fighting and coalition air strikes in the area.

A video posted earlier on Youtube announced the offensive in southern Hasaka, and showed several dozen men in fatigues standing outdoors with yellow flags and banners carrying the name of the Democratic Forces of Syria in Arabic and Kurdish.

The campaign would "continue until all occupied areas in Hasaka are freed from Daesh," a spokesman for the alliance's general command said in the video, using an Arabic name for IS. He urged residents to stay away from IS-controlled areas of Hasaka.

Another spokesman later said alliance forces had already attacked Islamic State fighters.

"The battle began after midnight," Talal Salu told Reuters via internet messaging service. "They were flanked by our forces... (who) thwarted a counter attack."

UNITED STATES' SUPPORT

The United States' decision to station ground troops in Syria comes after it dropped ammunition to rebel groups in northern Syria several weeks ago.

Washington's strategy in Syria has shifted from trying to train fighters outside the country to supplying groups headed by U.S.-vetted commanders.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors developments on the ground, said fighting was raging on Saturday near al Hawl, a town close to the Iraqi border, accompanied by coalition air strikes.

Hasaka province borders Iraq and territory there that is a crucial stronghold for Islamic State.

One member of alliance, the Kurdish YPG has to date proved Washington's most effective partner on the ground against IS in Syria. It had pushed towards the border in previous fighting this year.

The Raqqa Revolutionaries Front, one of the Arab groups in the allliance, on Thursday declared an imminent offensive against Islamic State in its Syrian stronghold of Raqqa province, which borders Hasaka.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky)

UNITED NATIONS The United Nations said on Saturday two contractors with the world body had been detained in Yemen, but gave no further details on the incident.

"Two contractors have been detained and DSS (Department of Safety and Security) is looking into it," a U.N. spokesman said without elaborating or confirming if the two were American citizens.

A U.S. State Department official said it was aware of reports that two U.S. citizens had been detained at Sanaa airport in Yemen.

"The protection of U.S. citizens overseas is one of the Department of State’s highest priorities, including in these cases," the official said in an email. "Due to privacy considerations, we do not have any further information to share."

A Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in Yemen's civil war in March to try to restore the government after it was toppled by Iran-allied Houthi forces, but a mounting civilian death toll and dire humanitarian situation has alarmed human rights groups.

The United Nations has designated Yemen as one of its highest-level humanitarian crises, alongside emergencies in South Sudan, Syria and Iraq. It says more than 21 million people in Yemen need help, or about 80 percent of the population.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols and Doina Chiacu; Editing by Digby Lidstone)

MOSCOW Russian aviation regulator Rosaviatsia said on Saturday that it didn't yet see any reason to blame the crash of a Russian airliner in Egypt on a technical failure, an error by the crew or external actions, RIA news agency reported.

"Until there is reliable evidence about the circumstances of what happened, there is no sense in putting forward and discussing any versions," RIA quoted Rosaviatsia as saying in a statement.

(Reporting By Jason Bush; Editing by Toby Chopra)

MANAMA Moscow's intervention in the Syrian conflict will have the unintended consequences of drawing Russia into a quagmire and alienating Sunni Muslims across the region, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Saturday.

Russia began air strikes a month ago, changing the balance of forces in the war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad and against rebel groups that include both jihadists and non-militants backed by the West, Turkey and Gulf countries.

"The quagmire will spread and deepen, drawing Russia further in. Russia will be seen as being in league with Assad, Hezbollah, Iran, alienating millions of Sunnis in Syria, the region and indeed in Russia itself," Blinken told the Manama Dialogue regional security conference in Bahrain.

Syria's civil war has aggravated sectarian tensions in the region, with Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and some Iraqi militias, all Shi'ite Muslim, backing Assad against rebel groups that are overwhelmingly Sunni.

"One month has passed since the Russian occupation. More than 1,400 are killed, all civilians, in parts of Syria. And these are areas which are outside the control of Daesh," Syrian opposition leader Khaled Khoja said in Manama, using an Arabic name for Islamic State.

Talks in Vienna on Friday provided the first occasion on which Saudi Arabia and Iran, the region's two main backers of opposing forces in Syria, put aside their bitter rivalry to discuss the possibility of a peaceful solution.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond said it had been a "remarkable achievement" to get the two countries to sit and talk, but Saudi Arabia said Russia and Iran had to agree on when and how Assad and foreign forces backing him should quit Syria.

"For us without al-Assad's departure, there is no solution for the Syrian problems," Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir told Reuters. Asked by reporters when that should take place, he replied: "He should leave this afternoon. The sooner the better."

He added that Riyadh was meanwhile considering intensifying support to moderate Syrian rebels by providing them with "more lethal weapons", but gave no further details.

Blinken said Washington was adding $100 million in support to the Syrian opposition for basic services such as schooling, raising its total infusion to $500 million.

RESTRICTIVE POLICIES

Blinken said there was a shared objective with Russia in defeating Islamic State, but it was important to get away from the idea that the only choice in Syria was between the ultra-hardline militant group and Assad.

He also took the region's countries to task for their restrictive politics and lack of openness, saying it was the marginalisation of moderate voices rather than the Arab Spring calls for freedom in 2011 that had caused instability.

"Where there was hope for more open, accountable, and democratic government in 2011, there is now - with few exceptions — more violence, fear, and chaos," Blinken said.

He said U.S. engagement in the Middle East, while deeper than ever, was broad and went beyond the military aspect, and there could be no military solution to Syria's war.

On Friday, the United States disclosed plans to station its first ground troops in Syria for the war against Islamic State.

Washington has sought to reassure Gulf allies that its reluctance to actively participate in military efforts to push Assad from power does not mean it is turning its back on the region or on its traditional Arab partners.

Delegates at the Manama conference, a rare regional talking shop on security, included ministers, diplomats and intelligence officials from countries in the Middle East and North Africa, Gulf Arab states as well as the United States and Britain. Gulf-based Russian diplomats were also present.

Saudi Foreign Minister Jubeir added that he hoped Iran would use its additional revenue after sanctions on it were lifted following its nuclear deal with world powers to develop its economy "rather than for aggressive policies".

(Additional reporting by Nazeeha Saeed in Manama; Writing by Angus McDowall in Riyadh; Editing by Miral Fahmy and Clelia Oziel)

DHAKA A publisher of a slain online critic of religious militancy was hacked to death on Saturday in the Bangladesh capital, police said, hours after similar attacks on two secular writers and another publisher in the majority-Muslim country.

Faysal Arefin published books by Avijit Roy, a U.S. citizen of Bangladeshi origin who was killed by Islamists militants in the same way in February.

Arefin was hacked to death with sharp weapons in his office on the second floor of a crowded market in the capital, police said.

Militants have targeted secularist writers in Bangladesh in recent years, as the government has cracked down on Islamist groups seeking to turn the South Asian nation of 160 million people into a sharia-based state.

Four secular bloggers have been hacked to death this year for writing critically about Islamist militancy.

At least 15 members of an al Qaeda inspired group Ansarullah Bangla Team, including a British citizen, have been arrested since August, after blogger Niloy Chatterjee was killed by a group of attackers armed with machetes.

The country has also been rocked by attacks in which two foreigners were shot dead and a Shi'ite shrine in Dhaka was bombed.

In the earlier attacks on Saturday, two secular writers and another publisher of Roy were stabbed and shot in Dhaka.

Three unknown assailants entered the office of a publishing house and attacked them, police official Jamal Uddin said.

The attackers locked their victims inside the office before fleeing the scene, he added. They were rushed to a hospital and two of them were in a critical condition.

The publisher had filed a complaint with police after being threatened with death in a posting on Facebook following the attack on Roy, his friends said.

British high commissioner to Bangladesh Robert Gibson condemned Saturday’s attacks.

"Violence is never the answer or acceptable in any circumstances," he tweeted.

(Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Alison Williams)

MOSCOW Russian state transport regulator Rostransnadzor found violations when it last conducted a routine flight safety inspection of Kogalymavia, whose jet crashed in Egypt, Interfax news agency quoted the watchdog as saying.

But after the inspection, which took place in March 2014, the airline remedied the breaches within the deadlines it had been set, Interfax reported.

(Reporting by Christian Lowe; Editing by Jason Bush)

LAHORE, Pakistan Eleven people were killed when rival political parties fired on each other on Saturday as Pakistanis voted in local elections seen as a referendum on the national government halfway through its term.

The violence occurred in the Khairpur district of the southern province of Sindh, which held the polls along with the central Punjab province. It was not immediately clear which parties were responsible.

"Eleven people were killed when two groups opened fire," police deputy inspector general Kamran Fazal told Reuters.

The opposition, led by international cricket star turned politician Imran Khan, is hoping the polls will help build a national coalition that could challenge Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) party at the next general election.

Pakistan's other two provinces held their local elections months ago. Khan won in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in the northwest and Sharif's party and its coalition partners won in the sparsely populated western province of Baluchistan.

Observers are closely watching the polls in Punjab, Pakistan's richest and most populous province and the power base of Sharif, who swept to national power in a landslide election in 2013.

"PMLN has the upper hand in Punjab but it will be a strongly challenged by PTI," said political analyst Wajahat Masood, referring to Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf party.

Security and the economy have improved under Sharif but the government has failed to tackle corruption or tax dodging by the wealthy, two problems that are starving social services such as schools and hospitals of cash.

Over 20 million people are registered to vote in Punjab and 4.6 million in Sindh. Pakistan has a population of 190 million.

Local bodies, in which voters elect councillors directly, devolve administrative and financial powers to lower tiers of electoral bodies.

Local government elections were last held in 2005 under General Pervez Musharraf, who came to power in a bloodless coup.

National and provincial political parties dislike the system, saying the military has previously used it to undermine parliamentary democracy.

In March this year, the Supreme Court called the absence of the local government system for over a decade unconstitutional and ordered the election commission to arrange for polls to be held as soon as possible.

(Additional reporting by Syed Raza Hassan in Karachi; Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

MOSCOW Russia's Investigative Committee said on Saturday it was checking fuel samples from the last refueling stop, in the Russian city of Samara, of an airliner that crashed in Egypt, RIA news agency reported citing the committee's spokesman.

The spokesman, Vladimir Markin, also said investigators are questioning people who were involved in preparing the aircraft and its crew, and carrying out searches at Moscow's Domodedovo airport where the airline that operated the plane is based.

Earlier in the day the committee said it had opened a criminal case against the airline.

(Reporting By Jason Bush; Editing by Toby Chopra)

CAIRO A militant group affiliated to Islamic State in Egypt claimed responsibility for the downing of a Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Saturday, the group said in a statement circulated by supporters on Twitter.

Egyptian security sources earlier on Saturday said early investigations suggested the plane crashed due to a technical fault.

The claim of responsibility was also carried by the Aamaq website which acts as a semi official news agency for Islamic State.

"The fighters of the Islamic State were able to down a Russian plane over Sinai province that was carrying over 220 Russian crusaders. They were all killed, thanks be to God," the statement circulated on Twitter said.

(Reporting by Mostafa Hashem; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Ralph Boulton)

CAIRO None of 224 passengers and crew on board a Russian passenger plane that crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula on Saturday survived, medical and security sources said.

Search and rescue team members are still gathering the remains of victims, the sources said.

(Reporting by Yusri Mohamed; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein; editing by Susan Thomas)

CAIRO An initial examination of the crash site showed that a Russian passenger plane crashed in Egypt's Sinai peninsula due to a technical fault, security sources in North Sinai said.

About 150 bodies, including burnt corpses, were found in a 5 km (3.1 miles) radius from the crashed aircraft, the sources said. The plane fell vertically, which led to large parts of it burning, the sources added.

(Reporting by Yusri Mohamed; Writing by Ahmed Aboulenein)