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Survivors of the attack in Egypt arrived in Mexico City on Friday on the presidential plane. They were transferred by helicopter to a hospital.Credit Ronaldo Schemidt/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

MEXICO CITY — The six Mexican survivors of an air attack by Egyptian security forces on a group of Mexican tourists and their Egyptian guides returned to their country on Friday as the Mexican government said it would seek compensation on their behalf from Egypt.

The presidential jet carrying the survivors, their families, Mexico’s foreign minister and a team of Mexican doctors landed here at 8 a.m. Friday. The survivors, five women and one man, were taken off the plane — some on stretchers, others in wheelchairs — and flown by helicopter to a hospital here.

Twelve people were killed in the attack on Sunday: eight tourists and four Egyptians. The circumstances of the case remain as murky as they were at the beginning of the week.

The Mexican government repeated its demand for an “exhaustive, transparent and thorough” investigation in a diplomatic note presented to the Egyptian ambassador here late Thursday. The note also said that the Mexican government would seek full reparations, including compensation for damages, for the victims and their families, but did not say how much.

The tourists’ convoy of four sport utility vehicles had stopped for lunch on Sunday about a three-hour drive southwest of Cairo on the road to the oasis town Bahariya, a common staging point for desert excursions, when the crew of a helicopter gunship fired on them.

The Egyptian authorities have said that the group was traveling in a restricted area where security forces were searching for Islamic militants and that the tourists were mistaken for fighters.

The head of the official union of Egyptian tour guides and friends of the trip’s leader posted on social media photographs of the permit for the tour company, Windows of Egypt. The tour group was accompanied by a member of the tourism police when it was attacked.

Asked at a news conference at the airport on Friday if the survivors had offered any information on what happened during the air assault, the Mexican foreign minister, Claudia Ruiz Massieu, sidestepped the question.

Egypt’s foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, had promised on Wednesday an investigation into the killings, just before the Egyptian government imposed a ban on news coverage of the episode.

Mexico’s health minister, Dr. Mercedes Juan López, said the survivors had burns, broken bones and respiratory problems.