“Whether it was an accident, or whether it was – and it’s something that is on our minds – terrorism”.
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The objects were plastic and colored red and white, Reuters reported earlier, citing defense sources.
The French president has confirmed that an EgyptAir plane carrying 66 people crashed in the Mediterranean Sea off the Greek island of Crete early Thursday. “We can not rule anything out”, he said. “No hypothesis is favored or ruled out at this stage”, it said in a statement.
Separately, Paris prosecutors said that they were opening an investigation into matter. Despite repeated calls, the pilots did not respond.
Greek air traffic controllers spoke to the pilot over the island of Kea, in what was thought to be the last broadcast from the aircraft.
It lost contact with the radar tracking system over the Mediterranean Sea at 2:45 a.m.at 37,000 feet, after entering Egyptian airspace, the airline said. While International Bureau of Aviation President Phil Seymour said the planes have “a fantastic safety record”, there have been over a dozen crashes involving the A320.
EgyptAir confirmed on Twitter that a total of 56 passengers and 10 crew members were on board.
EgyptAir said in a statement earlier that a signal had been received by the army more than an hour after the plane was due to land.
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi said that people should refer to the case of the EgyptAir flight as a “missing plane” until debris is found. Greece has given a navy frigate, two military transport planes and a radar plane for the search and rescue operation.
He said the plane spun all the way around and suddenly lost altitude just before vanishing from radar screens.
A Greek Ministry of Defense official told ABC News that before contact with the aircraft was lost, it made a 90-degree left turn, then a 360-degree turn before dropping 20,000 feet in altitude.
A major search and rescue operation has been launched by Egyptian and Greek authorities to find the remains of the aircraft, with reports of a flash in the sky over the Mediterranean.
The passengers comprised the following nationalities: one Algerian, 30 Egyptians, 15 French, one Belgian, one British, one Canadian, one Chadian, two Iraqis, one Kuwaiti, one Portuguese, one Saudi and one Sudanese.
The director, Constantine Lyzerakos, said the plane was at 37,000 feet, traveling at 519 miles per hour, and did not report any problem.
Greek state television ERT reported that debris had been spotted some 425 km from Crete, about 100 nautical miles from the Airbus A320’s last known location. No one was hurt in the incident, which Cypriot authorities said was not terrorism related.
It then dropped more than 25,000ft (7,620m) before disappearing from radar, he added.
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In October past year, 224 people were killed when a Russian aircraft crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula minutes after it took off from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
