Crash bodies ‘suggest mid-air blast’

HUMAN remains from the crash site of EgyptAir flight 804 suggest there was an explosion on board that may have brought the aircraft down.

A senior forensic official – part of the Egyptian investigative team – made the claim after examining the remains in Cairo.

He said all 80 pieces he had seen were small, and that “there isn’t even a whole body part, like an arm or a head”.

At least one piece of a human arm, he said, had signs of burns – an indication it might have “belonged to a passenger sat next to an explosion”.

The official added: “The logical explanation is that an explosion brought it down – but I cannot say what caused the blast.”

All 66 people on board were killed when the Airbus 320 crashed in the Mediterranean early on Thursday while en route from Paris to Cairo.

Erratic

Egyptian authorities insist terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure, while some aviation experts have said the erratic flight reported by the Greek defence minister suggests a bomb blast or struggle in the cockpit – but so far no hard evidence has emerged.

Independent Cairo newspaper al-Watan quoted an unnamed forensics official as saying the plane blew up in mid-air, but that it has yet to be determined whether the blast was caused by an explosive device or something else.

The official said the remains retrieved so far are “no larger than the size of a hand”.

Family members of the victims arrived in Cairo yesterday to give DNA samples in an effort to help identify the remains.

Egypt has dispatched a submarine to search for the flight’s black boxes, while ships and planes from France, Britain, Cyprus, Greece and the US have joined the international effort to locate wreckage.