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| Tarek Abu Laban (center) who lost four relatives, all victims of Thursday's EgyptAir plane crash, attends prayers for the dead, at al Thawrah Mosque, in Cairo, Egypt, May 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil) |
CAIRO -Egyptian Armed Forces have found human remains and more wreckage of the crashed EgyptAir flight, Egypt's ministry of civil aviation said on Friday.
In a press statement, the ministry said besides human remains, the army has found the plane's seats and passengers' belongings. The search is still going on, the statement said.
Earlier on Friday, the military has found debris from the crashed EgyptAir plane 290 km north of the coastal city of Alexandria, confirmation that an EgyptAir jet had plunged into the sea with 66 people on board.
Chinese President Xi Jinping Friday sent messages respectively to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and French President Francois Hollande, extending condolences over the crash of flight 804.
In the messages, Xi expressed deep condolences to the victims of the disaster and sincere sympathy to their families.
A European satellite spotted a potential oil slick in the area of the eastern Mediterranean Sea where the jet disappeared, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday.
The image, taken by satellite Sentinel-1A at 1600 GMT on Thursday, shows a slick about 2 km (1.2 miles) long, roughly 40 km southeast of the aircraft's last known location.
Although suspicion pointed to Islamist militants who blew up another airliner over Egypt just seven months ago, no group had claimed responsibility more than 24 hours after the disappearance of flight MS804, an Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo.
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Timeline of developments since an EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo crashed into the sea. (Photo / AFP) |
Flight data suggested there were smoke alerts aboard EgyptAir flight 804 minutes before it crashed in the Mediterranean Sea early on Thursday, CNN reported on Friday.
However, a US official characterized the report as an unconfirmed rumor.
CNN said it obtained the data through a screen grab from an Egyptian source, and said the data came from an automatic system aboard the plane called the Aircraft Communications Addressing and Reporting System (ACARS).
The Greek Defense Minister Panos Kammenos said that the plane swerved wildly before plummeting into the sea.
The Egyptian military said that no distress call was received from the pilot.
The junior minister for transport, Alain Vidalies, said on France-Info radio that "no theory is favored" at this stage and urged "the greatest caution."
Amid fears the plane was downed by an extremist attack, Vidalies defended security at Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport, saying staff badges are revoked if there is the slightest security doubt.
Families of the victims spent the night in a hotel in Cairo while they awaited the news of their loved ones. Egyptian officials said some arrived from Paris late Thursday, among them eight French relatives of the 15 French passengers on board the missing jet.
The Egyptian officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
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This Aug 21, 2015 photo shows an EgyptAir Airbus A320 with the registration SU-GCC taking off from Vienna International Airport, Austria. (Photo / Thomas Ranner, AP) |
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Relatives of passengers on a vanished EgyptAir flight grieve as they leave the in-flight service building where they were held at Cairo International Airport, Egypt on May 19, 2016. (Photo / Amr Nabil, AP) |
