EgyptAir flight MS804 carrying 66 people has been confirmed crashed. French President, Francois Hollande, who confirmed that the missing plane has actually crashed, said nothing could be ruled out as to the reason why.
Reports have it that the president said: “The information we have gathered – ministers, members of government and, of course, the Egyptian authorities – confirm, sadly, that it has crashed. It is lost,” the French leader said following an emergency meeting on Thursday morning Paris in time.
“No hypothesis is ruled out,” he said while pledging solidarity with families and those searching for debris.
The confirmation follows a statement from Airbus on the “loss” of the plane that had accumulated 48,000 flight hours.
Earlier Egyptian Prime Minister Sherif Ismail said “we cannot rule anything out” as experts speculate terrorism is a likely cause.
Anonymous security officials from Greece and Egypt have confirmed the crash, however EgyptAir maintains the reason for the disappearance “hasn’t yet been confirmed”.
A Greek aviation source told AFP the plane had crashed into the sea off the southern Greek island of Karpathos while in Egyptian airspace.
The last communication with the pilot was three minutes before it disappeared, and there had been no distress call, the official said.
A search is now underway for the debris.
Earlier EgyptAir tweeted in Arabic about a “distress signal”, which suggested it could be from the plane’s emergency devices. However the Egyptian army denied such a signal was received.
There were also unconfirmed reports that a merchant ship saw an “explosion that lit up the sky” near the Greek island of Karpathos where the plane was believed to have disappeared, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Another source claims that Greek island residents said they saw a “ball of fire” in the sky around the time the plane is said to have disappeared.
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