The Jewish student organization Hillel Russia mourned a former program director who died aboard a Russian airliner that crashed in Egypt.
Anna Tishinskaya, 27, was en route from Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg aboard a charter flight operated by the Russian Kogalymavia airliner (which operates under the name Metrojet) when it crashed in the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday.
All 224 passengers, most of them Russian tourists, died, Egyptian officials said.
Tishinskaya “was part of the family,” even though she no longer worked for Hillel, the group said. “Anya, you were incredibly talented, swift, fearless, sincere, kind and bright. You were a truly extraordinary person,” the statement read.
Tishinskaya graduated from St. Petersburg State University, where she studied history, according to a report on the Russian-language website isrageo.com. She took part in the activities of Hillel Russia and the Israeli Culture Centre in St. Petersburg, where she was organizing events as late as 2012.
Radical Islamists claimed responsibility for downing the plane, but security experts said that was unlikely. A plane flying at the altitude at which Metrojet Airbus A321-200 dropped off the radar would be beyond the range of weapons that militants in the area are known to possess, the BBC reported.
Egyptian authorities are working to retrieve the plane’s black box to determine what caused the crash. According to Alexander Smirnov, the deputy general director of Metrojet, the cause of the crash “could only have been an external impact on the plane” in the air.
When asked to elaborate, Smirnov said that he could not divulge any more details as the investigation is ongoing.
