No terror group has claimed responsibility for the Egyptian airliner crash occurred last week, but Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukri told NBC in an interview on Tuesday that terrorism was not ruled out. It remains unclear what made the EgyptAir Flight 804 plunge into the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday and Shoukri says it could have been an attack, a technical issue or any third possibility.
Egypt’s state-run newspaper Al-Ahram reported on Tuesday that an Aircraft Technical Log signed by the jetliner’s pilot before takeoff shows that the plane did not present technical issues before taking off from Paris.
The foreign minister warned that extremists sometimes claim responsibility for an attack even without having the proof of it. In other cases, Shoukri said, they remain silent when they want to create confusion.
He decided not to rule out the possibility of a blast ahead of the crash while other Egyptian authorities tried to deny that an explosion had taken place at that moment.
Before the minister’s interview, The Associated Press reported that a senior Egyptian forensics official had declared that several body parts recovered from the Flight 804 crash site indicated that a blast might have occurred on board, given that the 23 bags of pieces studied at a morgue were no bigger than the palm of a hand.
However, the Egyptian Forensic Medical Department denied that information and said there was no evidence to support it.
Shoukri said there were no clear indications that a bomb had led to the crash but noted that an explosion should not be ruled out because it was still unknown why the flight vanished from radar and pilots did not have time to warn air traffic control before the crash.
“It remains high on the priority list in terms of potential and possible causes,” Shoukri said, as quoted by NBC News.
Islamic State militants released a picture of a bomb to claim responsibility for the crash of the Russian Metrojet plane over the Sinai Peninsula last October and Egypt president admitted that terrorists were behind that crash.
“If we are discussing terrorist organizations, they also do what they deem in their best interest to disrupt or perpetrate violence and keep all of the international community on its seat’s edge,” Shoukri commented.
The crash
Flight 804 disappeared from radar when it was headed to Cairo from Paris with 66 passengers and crew members on board. French authorities said smoke was detected aboard the jetliner during the flight.
The French have provided assistant to the search that continues in the Mediterranean, according to Shoukri. They have sent a search ship and Egypt has deployed a robot submarine as they look for the plane’s black boxes and fuselage at 10,000 feet deep. According to a report by Reuters, the batteries of the signal emitters last for 30 days.
Source: NBC News