The Egyptian Armed Forces on Saturday morning released the first photos of debris from EgyptAir flight 804 recovered from the Mediterranean Sea.
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The Egyptian Civil Aviation Ministry said in addition to the passengers’ belongings, the army had also found human remains and airplane’s seats.
“The presidency with utmost sadness and regret mourns the victims on aboard the EgyptAir flight who were killed after the plane crashed in the Mediterranean on its way back to Cairo from Paris”, Sisi’s office said in a statement. The aviation minister said a terrorist attack was more likely than a technical failure, but offered no evidence. The anonymous sources said the U.S. had not ruled out any potential causes for the crash, including mechanical failure, terrorism or a deliberate act by the pilot or crew.
New images have emerged of shattered parts of the EgyptAir plane recovered from the crash site in the Mediterranean.
Meanwhile search crews were continuing to scour for further wreckage of the plane – including for the black boxes, which could provide vital clues to why the jetliner crashed killing all 66 on board. No militant group claims to have brought down the plane.
The plane was carrying 56 passengers and 10 crew members and security when it left Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris late Wednesday.
The BEA is assisting an official investigation into the crash, which has been launched by Egypt’s air crash investigation authority.
The crash has struck a demoralizing blow to Egypt. The economy has been gutted by years of turmoil since the 2011 overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak, and the Russian plane crash caused a new plunge in tourism, one of the country’s main money makers.
In a statement delivered to reporters following the meeting, he said: “All the hypotheses are being examined – none are being favored”.
The ongoing sea and air search to locate the wreckage of an Egyptian passenger plane is shown in an Egyptian military video. Upon further inspection, the debris – which included luggage, two passenger seats, and at least one body part – was confirmed to have come from the downed plane.
He spoke after EgyptAir said in Arabic on its Twitter page that the plane had sent an emergency signal at 04:26 Cairo time (02:26 GMT) – thought to have been from an emergency beacon – two hours after it had disappeared from radar screens.
At 3:27 a.m. Greek time, air traffic controllers in Athens attempted to contact the plane to hand over monitoring of the flight from Greek to Egyptian authorities, according to Greek officials.
The European Space Agency said Friday a satellite detected what could be an oil slick from the plane on the surface of the eastern Mediterranean Sea.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault asserted on French television that there is “absolutely no indication” of what caused the crash.
The aircraft, a modern single-aisle jet manufactured in 2003, was traveling at cruising altitude before disappearing from radar off the Egyptian coast.
Examining the personal belongings and other debris from the missing EgyptAir jet confirms that the airliner that carried 66 had fallen into the water, the Egyptian navy said Friday.
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Also aboard were 15 French citizens, including an infant, and passengers from Iraq, Britain, Belgium, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Chad, Portugal, Canada and Algeria, according to Sharif Fathi, Egypt’s civil aviation minister.
