EgyptAir crash may be terror attack; 66 feared dead

An EgyptAir flight from Paris to Cairo carrying 66 people crashed in the Mediterranean on Thursday with wreckage found off the Greek island of Karpathos, as investigators probed whether it was downed by a bomb.

Egypt’s aviation minister said that while it was too soon to say why the Airbus A320 had vanished, “a terrorist” attack would be a more likely scenario than a technical failure.

Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos said the plane had fallen 22,000 feet and swerved sharply twice in Egyptian airspace before it disappeared from radar screens.

The incident raised fears of a repeat of the bombing of a Russian passenger plane by ISIS over Egypt October 2015 that killed all 224 people on board.

A Greek military spokesman said an Egypt C-130 plane had spotted floating objects that could be debris from the crash, and ships were en route to investigate. The jet had been flying from Paris to Cairo overnight when it disappeared off radar screens, without sending a distress signal.

French President Francois Hollande confirmed that the plane had “crashed” and Paris said its accident department had opened an investigation.

Cairo’s state prosecutor also ordered a probe into the incident, a statement said, signalling suspicion that foul play could have caused the crash.

Egypt’s aviation minister Sherif Fathy said he could not rule out either terrorism or a technical problem. “I don’t deny the hypothesis of a terrorist attack or something technical. It is too early,” he told a news conference, adding that no wreckage had been found.

“The possibility of having a different action onboard, of having a terror attack, it is higher than the possibility of having a technical,” failure, he added.