An EgyptAir flight bound for Cairo crashed Thursday, with an Egyptian official saying that terror is a “stronger” possibility as a cause than technical error.
There were 66 people on board the plane that departed from Paris. More from the Associated Press:
EgyptAir Flight 804 was lost from radar at 2:45 a.m. local time when it was flying at 37,000 feet, the airline said. It said the Airbus A320 had vanished 10 miles after it entered Egyptian airspace. The officials said the search is now underway for the debris in the southern Mediterranean Sea. They said the “possibility that the plane crashed has been confirmed,” as the plane hasn’t landed in any of the nearby airports. … A Greek defense ministry source told Reuters that a merchant ship captain reported a “flame in the sky” 130 nautical miles south of the island of Karpathos.
An Egyptian aviation official commented on what could have been behind the incident:
Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi says the possibility of a terror attack as the cause of the EgyptAir crash is “stronger” than technical failure. Fathi was responding to a reporter’s question during a press conference on Thursday in Cairo. He said that he doesn’t want draw conclusions but that analysis points to terrorism as a cause with a higher probability.
France’s Foreign Ministry and Interior Ministry hadn’t commented on the crash as of mid-afternoon Thursday local time.
