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Week after EgyptAir crash, mystery remains

Sources within the Egyptian investigation committee told Reuters late Tuesday that the plane did not exhibit any technical glitches before taking off from Paris on a scheduled route to Cairo.

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According to a technical log signed by the plane’s pilot before takeoff, the plane showed no signs of technical issues before departing from Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.

The newspaper published flight data online and reported that ground stations received two electronic messages during the flight that indicated the plane’s engines were functional.

No distress call was received and Egyptian authorities have said the plane did not make contact with Egyptian air traffic control after passing out of Greek airspace shortly before crashing.

Sources have also revealed other intriguing facts from the investigation claiming that the plane with 66 people on board disappeared without swerving off radar screens less than a minute after entering Egyptian airspace.

Wednesday night, the search for Egypt-air flight 804 enters its eighth day.

Investigators still are looking for clues among the human remains and debris already recovered from the Mediterranean sea.

However, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi has warned against rushing to conclusions as to the cause of the crash.

Photo released by Egyptian Armed Forces on May 21, 2016, shows part of the wreckage from EgyptAir flight 804.

Egypt hired two foreign companies on Wednesday to help locate the black boxes of Egyptair flight MS804, as the search for debris and human remains continued in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

An Egyptian forensics official said 23 bags of body parts had been collected, the largest no bigger than the palm of a hand.

An Egyptian team formed by the civil aviation ministry is conducting the technical investigation and three officials from France’s BEA air accident investigation agency have been in Cairo since Friday, with an expert from Airbus, to assist.

EgyptAir said relatives of the victims had given DNA samples to forensics officials and investigators in the hope of identifying their loved ones.

There are too few messages to fit a typical fire, which would normally trigger a cascade of error reports as multiple systems failed, he said, and too many of them to confirm a single significant explosion.

A USA officials also said in a statement that the evidence they have gathered point to terrorism.

In contrast, the Islamic State quickly took credit for destroying Russian Metrojet Flight 9268, which blew up over Egypt’s Sinai in October, after taking off from the resort town of Sharm el-Sheik.

Greece’s defense minister said radar showed the aircraft turned 90 degrees left, then a full 360 degrees to the right, plummeting from 38,000 feet to 15,000 feet before disappearing at about 10,000 feet.

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It added that the priority was to locate the flight data and cockpit voice recorders – the so-called black boxes – and to retrieve more bodies.

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