CAIRO — Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi urged the media on Sunday not to speculate about the cause of an EgyptAir plane crash which killed all 66 people on board, and said all scenarios are still being considered.
In a speech he gave at the opening of a fertilizer plant, Sisi said the investigation into the cause of the crash could take a long time but that no one could hide the facts.
“Until now all scenarios are possible. So please, it is very important that we do not talk and say there is a specific scenario,” Sisi told assembled ministers and MPs.
Three days after the EgyptAir flight plunged into the Mediterranean with 66 people on board search teams scoured the sea on Sunday for the bodies of the dead and clues on why it crashed.
The Airbus A320 was en route from Paris to Cairo early on Thursday when it plummeted and turned full circle before vanishing from radar screens, without its crew sending a distress signal.
France’s aviation safety agency said Flight MS804 had transmitted automated messages indicating smoke in the cabin as the disaster unfolded.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the search — which has already yielded “pieces of the aircraft, body parts, belongings of the deceased” will continue until the black boxes are found.
“The search is ongoing... It will continue hopefully until we can ascertain exactly where the plane has gone down and the effort to extract the black box and the data recording,” Shoukry told CNN.
Asked about the reported smoke, he said: “I am not certain it can be conclusive. But it is certainly an important element in the jigsaw puzzle that has to be fully compiled.”
What brought down the plane remains the main question. Egypt’s aviation minister has said terrorism is more likely than technical failure.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said “all theories are being examined and none is favoured.”
The disaster comes just seven months after the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt’s Sinai peninsula in October that killed all 224 people on board.
The Daesh group was quick to claim responsibility for that attack, but there has been no such claim linked to the EgyptAir crash.
A French patrol boat carrying equipment capable of tracing the black boxes was expected in the search area between the Greek islands and the Egyptian coast on Sunday or Monday.
But experts have warned that the equipment could be useless if the black boxes — which can emit signals up to five weeks — have sunk to a depth of more than 2,000 meters (6,500 feet).
French and Egyptian aviation officials have said it is too soon determine what brought down the plane. — Agencies
