Air tragedy: EgyptAir plane debris found off Greek isle

Investigators probing whether the aircraft carrying 66 people was downed by a bomb

CAIRO: Debris from an EgyptAir plane carrying 66 people that crashed Thursday in the Mediterranean has been found, the airline said, as investigators probed whether it was downed by a bomb.

Greek defence sources told Reuters they had found pieces of plastic and two lifevests in the sea 370km south of the island of Crete.

Egypt’s aviation minister said that while it was too soon to say why the Airbus A320 flying from Paris to Cairo had vanished, a ‘terrorist attack’ would be a more likely scenario than a technical failure.

“The Egyptian Ministry of Civil Aviation has just received an official letter from the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that confirms the finding of wreckage of the missing aircraft No. MS 804,” it said in English on its Twitter account.

Egypt’s Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said he could not rule out either terrorism or a technical problem. “I don’t deny the hypothesis of a terrorist attack or something technical. It is too early,” he said. “The possibility of having a different action onboard, of having a terror attack, it is higher than the possibility of having a technical (failure).”



Egypt and Greece both dispatched aircraft and naval vessels on a search mission and they were expected to be joined by French teams. Fifteen French citizens were among the 26 foreign passengers on the EgyptAir flight, who also included a Briton and a Canadian.

France’s President Francois Hollande promised a comprehensive probe into the cause of the crash as suspicions swiftly focused on a bomb.

“Whether it was an accident or another hypothesis that everyone has on their mind – a terrorist hypothesis... at this stage we must focus on our solidarity with the families and the search for the causes of the catastrophe,” he said.

EgyptAir said contact was lost with the flight about 280 kilometres  north of the Egyptian coast. A Greek aviation source told AFP the flight had disappeared from Greek radar at around 0029 GMT.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 20^th, 2016.