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EgyptAir flight goes off radar en route from Paris

EgyptAir has earlier confirmed that the missing plane, an Airbus A320, disappeared from radar screens en route from Paris to Cairo at 2:45 a.m. Cairo local time (0045 GMT) on Thursday.

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The Egyptians had said the Greeks told them they found blue and white wreckage from the missing plane south of the island of Crete.

Israeli officials said the plane crash was caused by a “terror attack”, according to a Tweet by Alon Ben-David, senior defense correspondent for Israel’s Channel 10.

He spoke after French President Francois Hollande held an emergency meeting at the Elysee Palace.

There are conflicting reports by EgyptAir and the Egyptian Army of whether a signal has been received from the plane’s “black box” flight data recorder.

The crash also renewed security concerns surrounding Egyptian planes and airports, and brought back still fresh memories of the horrific Russian passenger plane crash in Sinai last October, when all 224 people on board were killed.

Greek civil aviation chief Constantinos Litzerakos said the pilot had mentioned no problem in the last communication before the plane disappeared, and it had not deviated from its course.

EgyptAir has confirmed that the wreckage reported to have been found near a Greek island is the wreckage from its plane that disappeared earlier on Thursday from the radar.

Greece also joined the search and rescue operation, officials at the Hellenic National Defence General Staff said.

The vice president of EgyptAir said that the wreckage of their crashed airliner has been found in the Meditteranean Sea, and that the operation is now a search and recovery mission, which means there are no survivors.

Egyptian and Russian officials said it may have been brought down by terrorists.

“The possibility of having a different action onboard, of having a terror attack, it is higher than the possibility of having a technical (failure)”.

Osman said his brother was on board the EgyptAir flight MS804, which left Paris on Wednesday night, for work.

Officials were scrambling to find out what happened to the Airbus A320, which was carrying 56 passenger and 10 crewmembers.

A U.S. review of satellite imagery so far has not produced any signs of an explosion aboard the EgyptAir flight that crashed en route from Paris to Cairo, officials from multiple United States agencies have told Reuters.

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“We are in close contact with the Egyptian authorities, both civil and military”, Valls told French radio. A man described by authorities as mentally unstable was taken into custody. But Egyptian officials rejected the notion of suicide altogether, insisting some mechanical reason caused the crash. They included 30 Egyptians, 15 French and two Canadians, as well as people from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Iraq, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

'Terrorism' more likely than technical failure in missing plane: Egypt minister