Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi said a submarine belonging to the Petroleum Ministry that can dive 3,000 meters (9,842 feet) underwater has been deployed to join in the global search for the plane, which crashed on Thursday while flying from Paris to Cairo with 66 people on board.
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“In the beginning, one of the highest officials of EgyptAir said they believed the crash was most likely the result of a terrorist act”. “So please, it is very important that we do not talk and say there is a specific scenario”, Sisi told assembled ministers and MPs.
The submarine can operate at a depth of 3,000 metres (9842 feet) below the surface.
“The Egyptian navy was able to retrieve more debris from the plane, some of the passengers’ belongings, human remains, and plane seats”, the Civil Aviation Ministry said in a statement.
Ships scouring the sea north of Alexandria for three days have found body parts, personal belongings and wreckage from the Airbus A320, but are still trying to locate the recorders that could shed light on the cause of the crash.
The mystery over the plane – which crashed with 56 passengers and 10 airline personnel aboard en route from Paris to Cairo – has deepened since US and Egyptian officials first speculated Thursday that a mechanical failure could not have caused the accident. “We can not at this stage come up with any conclusion”.
The priority now was to find the two flight recorders, known as black boxes, containing cockpit voice recordings and data readings, from the downed Airbus A320.
No militant group has claimed to have brought down the aircraft.
Sixty-six people were on board the plane when it disappeared from radar en route from Paris to Cairo.
What pieces of the wreckage have been recovered?
Smoke alerts were triggered in the toilet and the aircraft’s electrics, just minutes before the signal was lost, according to data published on air industry website the Aviation Herald, which said it had received flight data filed through the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS) from three independent channels.
“In cases like this we need to wait until we base our judgment on facts”, Fathi said in an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said he and other officials from France and Egypt had met with about 100 family members to express “our profound compassion” over the crash, the AP reported.
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The passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.
