Initial forensic analysis of passengers’ remains points to an explosion on EgyptAir flight MS804, which crashed last week, sources in the Egyptian-led investigation committee say.
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Egypt’s military has released pictures of wreckage recovered so far, including a pink bag decorated with butterflies, a life vest, shredded seat covers and mangled debris showing the EgyptAir’s name.
However, another forensics official said only a tiny number of remains had arrived so far and it was too early to specify whether there had been an explosion aboard.
No group has claimed responsibility for taking down the jet, and as of now, investigators have found nothing implicating the flight crew or security officials aboard the plane, an Egyptian official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.
But another person – a senior Egyptian forensics official – said today that the human remains are very small in size, and that there are burn marks – indicating that an explosion may have brought down the aircraft.
While Egypt’s aviation minister has pointed to terrorism as more likely than technical failure, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said there was “absolutely no indication” of why the plane went down. Cairo deployed a submarine over the weekend to search for wreckage from the plane. Aviation experts have said that overheating is uncommon yet is highly unlikely to cause a crash.
The aircraft came down at 2.45am south of the Greek island of Karpathos and north of the Egyptian coast. It added that the priority is to locate the black boxes and to retrieve more bodies.
Flight MS804 had transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin shortly before it plunged into the Mediterranean, France’s aviation safety agency said.
Egypt’s public prosecutor formally requested data on the crashed EgyptAir plane from France and Greece on Monday, as the victims’ remains began arriving at a Cairo morgue ready for DNA testing.
Greek civil aviation authorities said all appeared fine with the flight until air traffic controllers were to hand it over to their Egyptian counterparts.
However, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi has warned against rushing to conclusions as to the cause of the crash. The 10 crew and 56 passengers included 30 Egyptian and 15 French nationals.
Egypt has been fighting an Islamist insurgency, including with an Islamic State affiliate, in the Sinai Peninsula.
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A frantic search was then launched in the aftermath of the crash, with the 66 on board said to have died after investigators found a body part and debris in the Mediterranean.
