The condition of human remains recovered from the crash site of EgyptAir Flight 804 suggests an explosion brought the plane down, a senior Egyptian forensic official told the Associated Press Tuesday.
(FOX)- The official, who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, claimed to have personally examined the remains of some of the plane’s 66 passengers and crew at a Cairo morgue. He said all 80 pieces brought to Cairo so far are small and that “there isn’t even a whole body part, like an arm or a head.”
The official added that “the logical explanation is that it was an explosion”, but “I cannot say what caused the blast.”
Flight 804, an Airbus A320, crashed into the eastern Mediterranean Sea early Thursday morning near the end of a fight from Paris to Cairo. Egyptian authorities said they believe terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure, but no hard evidence of either has emerged.
An independent Cairo newspaper, al-Watan, quoted an unnamed forensics official Tuesday 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 further said the remains retrieved so far are “no larger than the size of a hand.”
But Egypt’s head of forensics denied the statements Tuesday, Reuters reported, citing state news agency MENA.