From The National

CAIRO // Human remains retrieved from the crash site of EgyptAir flight 804 suggest there was an explosion on board that may have caused it to crash in the east Mediterranean, a senior Egyptian forensics official said on Tuesday.

“The logical explanation is that an explosion brought it down,” said the official, who is part of the Egyptian team investigating the crash in which 66 people died en route from from Paris to Cairo on Thursday.

He has examined the remains at a Cairo mortuary, he said.

The 80 pieces taken to Cairo were small.

“There isn’t even a whole body part, like an arm or a head,” said the official, adding that one piece was the left side of a head.

“But I cannot say what caused the blast,” he said.

Egyptian authorities said they believed terrorism was a more likely explanation than equipment failure, and some aviation experts have said the erratic flight reported by the Greek defence minister suggested a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit.

No hard evidence has emerged.

An independent Cairo daily, Al Watan, quoted an unnamed forensics official as saying the plane blew up in midair but that it has yet to be determined whether the blast was caused by the an explosive device or something else. The official said the remains retrieved so far were “no larger than the size of a hand”.

In a search for clues, family members of the victims arrived on Tuesday at the Cairo mortuary forensics’ department to give DNA samples to help identify the remains of their kin, a security official said.

Egypt has sent a submarine to search for the flight’s black boxes and a French ship joined the effort to locate the wreckage.

Ships and aircraft from Britain, Cyprus, France, Greece and the United States were also taking part in the search.

• Associated Press

IMAGE: A French solider aboard an aircraft looking out a window during searches for debris from the crashed EgyptAir flight MS804, over the Mediterranean Sea. Alexnadre Groyer, Marine Nationale / AFP

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