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| Africa North |
| More human remains, debris recovered in search for EgyptAir plane |
| 2016-05-21 |
| [AlAhram] Egyptian search teams have recovered "more body parts" and other debris from a site in the Mediterranean where the missing EgyptAir flight is assumed to have crashed on Thursday. EgyptAir said on its official Twitter account that the Egyptian army and navy had found body parts, luggage, passengers' personal belongings, and plane seats. The military had said earlier on Friday that it had located "personal belongings of the passengers and parts of the plane debris," in the sea 290km north of Alexandria. The Egyptian authorities, assisted by forces from La Belle France, Greece, Britannia, Cyprus and Italia, continue to scour the search area for futher debris from the plane that disappeared from radar while flying over the Mediterranean on Thursday. All 66 on board are presumed to have perished. The Airbus 320 jet, which was flying from Gay Paree to Cairo, disappeared from radar screens shortly after entering Egyptian airspace early on Thursday morning. Later on Friday, the European Space Agency said that one of its satellites had detected a possible oil slick in the Mediterranea Sea in same area where the Airbus vanished. The image, taken by satellite Sentinel-1A at 1600 GMT on Thursday, shows a slick about 2 km (1.2 miles) long, roughly 40 km southeast of the aircraft's last known location. A second image taken at 0400 GMT on Friday showed that the slick had drifted by about 5 km. The ESA said it had passed on information related to the image to relevant authorities but said there was no guarantee that the slick was from the EgyptAir plane. It said another satellite, Sentinel-2A, would pass over the same area on 22 May. Greek Defence Minister Panos Kammenos said earlier that flight MS804 had swerved sharply and plummeted from 37,000 feet to 15,000 before plunging into the sea. Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi offered condolences on Friday to the families of victims of the tragedy, declaring his country's official confirmation of the deaths. The head of the Coptic Orthodox Church, Pope Tawadros II, said a mass service would be held for the dear departed at Cairo's Abbasiya Cathedral on Sunday. Thirty Egyptians, including seven crew member and three security personnel, were on board the doomed plane. Frenchies made up the second-largest number of passengers, at 15. The other passengers included two Iraqis, two Canadians, and one each from the UK, Belgium, Chad, Sudan, Kuwait, Algeria, and Portugal. |
| Posted by:Fred |