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Traces of explosives have been found on victims of the EgyptAir plane crash over the Mediterranean in May, investigators say. A criminal investigation would now begin into the crash of the Airbus A320, Egypt's civil aviation ministry said in a statement. Flight MS804 from Paris to Cairo plunged into the sea on 19 May killing all 66 people on board.

The plane’s cockpit voice recorder indicates there was a fire on the aircraft before it crashed — and an attempt to put it out, a senior source from the airline told CNN Tuesday. The revelation adds another detail to a picture that’s been slowly emerging since the May 19 crash. But investigators have said it’s still too soon to say what happened aboard the flight. The cockpit voice recorder captures sounds from the flight deck, including flight crew conversation, alarms and background noise that can help investigators understand what the flight crew was doing. Authorities haven’t released a transcript or...

A search vessel looking for the remains of victims of the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean in May has recovered all of the mapped bodies from the sea floor, investigators say. The Mauritian-based ship John Lethbridge is now sailing to Alexandria in Egypt. It will later return to the crash site to look for more bodies. ... It said Egyptian and French forensic doctors on board the vessel oversaw the body recovery process. The remains are due to be examined by prosecutors and forensic specialists in Alexandria before going to Cairo for DNA analysis.

However, other supportive components related to communication to and from the memory chips “had to be removed and replaced with new ones, whereas advanced high technology will be used to extract the recordings of these units”, according to a statement by the committee. The test results were satisfactory after replacing the mentioned components, which enabled the committee to read the CVR’s output. The committee members will return to Cairo with the fixed boards to continue reading and analysing the flight data recorder (FDR) and CVR at the central department for aircraft accidents at the Ministry of Civil Aviation. ... The...

The flight data recorder contains information consistent with fault warnings transmitted by the Airbus Group SE A320 that pointed to smoke in one of the lavatories and the avionics bay, where key electronics are housed, Egyptian crash investigators said. Wreckage recovered from the plane that crashed on May 19, killing all 66 people aboard, also showed signs of high temperature damage and soot, they said. The findings are the most concrete evidence yet that a small number of automated messages transmitted by the Airbus A320 pointing to problems on the plane weren’t erroneous. They also are likely intensify the investigation...

What sent EgyptAir flight 804 plummeting into the Mediterranean Sea last month, remains a mystery. Egyptian investigators have failed to extract any information from the badly-damaged memory chips of the crucial black boxes. Defeated, Egypt is now sending both the cockpit voice recorder and the flight data recorder to the BEA in France for analysis. The BEA -- the French version of the NTSB -- are considered some the best in the world at analyzing this type of equipment. In a statement released on Thursday, EgyptAir said the French will "carry out repair and removal of salt accumulations." "Then (the...

"BREAKING: Muslim Pilot Of Flight 804 Converted The Plane Into A Portable Mosque And Said Farewell Before He Crashed The Plane And Slaughtered Everyone" More evidence is arising to show that the pilot of Flight 804 went suicide. He did some bizarre things. He converted the plane into a makeshift mosque, used the equipment to tell passengers the direction of Mecca. Had a last supper and said “farewell” as if ‘we who are about to die salute you’. He called his brother before take-off telling him to ‘pray for him’ as he was going for martyrdom. He had connections with...

AIRO (AP) - The voice and data recorders from the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean nearly a month ago are "extensively damaged" and will need repairs before they can be analyzed, an Egyptian official said Friday, dampening hopes for quick answers as to what caused the disaster. The official didn't elaborate on how long the repairs would take but said if this cannot be done in Egypt, the so-called "black boxes" would be sent abroad. The official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media. With the wreckage of the Airbus...

A second flight recorder with information on crashed EgyptAir Flight MS804 has been retrieved, Egyptian investigators said on Friday. The Egyptian investigation committee said preparations were under way to transfer the two flight recorders to Alexandria where they will be received by an official from the general prosecutor's office and investigators.

Egypt's investigation committee said a doomed plane's cockpit voice recorder was found and pulled from the Mediterranean Sea on Thursday. ADVERTISEMENT Egypt on Wednesday said that it spotted and obtained images from the wreckage of the EgyptAir plane flying from Paris to Cairo that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all 66 people on board, according to a statement by the country's investigation committee. The committee said in a statement that a vessel, the John Lethbridge, contracted by the Egyptian government to join search efforts for the data recorders and the wreckage "had identified several main locations of the...

Cockpit voice recorder of crashed EgyptAir flight found in Mediterranean, Egyptian investigators say

<p>Egypt says it has spotted the wreckage of the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean last month, killing all 66 people on board.</p> <p>An investigation committee said in a statement late Wednesday that a vessel "the vessel contracted by the Egyptian government to join the search efforts for the data recorders and the wreckage of the doomed A320; had identified several main locations of the wreckage, accordingly the first images of the wreckage were provided to the investigation committee."</p>

Missing EgyptAir flight MS804 had reportedly been forced to make three emergency landings in the 24 hours leading up to crash. The Airbus 320 is said to have been forced to turn around shortly after takeoff on three separate occasions after it's warning systems signalled an anomaly onboard. The claims, made in French media, have since been denied by the Egyptian lead crash investigation committee.

Laplace's equipment picked up the "signals from the seabed of the wreckage search area, assumed to be from one of the data recorders," the Egyptian statement read. It added that a second ship, the John Lethbridge, affiliated with the Deep Ocean Search firm, will join the search team later this week. Locator pings emitted by flight data and cockpit voice recorders can be picked up from deep underwater. The Laplace is equipped with three detectors made by the Alseamar company designed to detect and localize signals from the flight recorders, which are believed to be at a depth of about...

An engineer stands next to a Hellenic Air Force C-130 HAUP aircraft at the 133rd Hellenic Air Force Base in Kasteli on the island of Crete, Greece, May 20, 2016. The plane is participating in a search operation for the missing EgyptAir flight 804 Airbus A320. Credit: Stefanos Rapanis/REUTERS

Egyptian political commentator Nabih Al-Wahsh accused Israel of downing EgyptAir Flight 804, and called for Egyptians and Arabs to kill any Israeli they come across and to mutilate his body. Al-Wahsh, a lawyer, filed a lawsuit with Egyptian courts four years ago in an attempt to abolish the Camp David Accords. Al-Asseema TV presenter tried to stop Al-Wahsh from inciting to violence, but to no avail, as Al-Wahsh called for the establishment of “death squads” that would hunt down Israelis all over the world. The show aired on May 20. Nabih Al-Wahsh: "All the evidence indicates that the filthy Zionist...

Greece has reportedly sent the last audio recordings of the doomed EgyptAir flight 804 on Thursday to the investigating teams in Cairo. The investigating team has also received radar imagery and audio recordings from Greece what would purportedly detail the flight’s final trajectory. This has come a day after Egypt reported contracted two foreign companies to help locate the flight data recorders of the carrier's plane that crashed last week in the Mediterranean, killing all 66 passengers and crew on board.

Forensic expert: EgyptAir human remains suggest explosion CAIRO (AP) — Human remains retrieved from the crash site of EgyptAir Flight 804 have burn marks and are very small in size, suggesting an explosion on board may have downed the aircraft in the east Mediterranean, a senior Egyptian forensics official said Tuesday. "The logical explanation is that an explosion brought it down," the official told The Associated Press. The official, who is part of the Egyptian team investigating the crash that killed all 66 people on board the flight from Paris to Cairo early last Thursday, has personally examined the...

Egypt rejects report that crash evidence points to explosionThe chief of Egypt's forensics authority denied reports Tuesday that an initial examination of human remains from doomed EgyptAir Flight 804 pointed to an explosion, Egypt's state news agency MENA reported. “Everything published about this matter is completely false and mere assumptions that did not come from the forensics authority,” MENA quoted Hesham Abdelhamid as saying in a statement.

A senior Egyptian forensics official says human remains retrieved from the crash site of EgyptAir flight 804 suggest there was an explosion on board that may have brought down the aircraft. The official is part of the Egyptian investigative team and has personally examined the remains at a Cairo morgue. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he isn't authorised to release the information. He says all 80 pieces brought to Cairo so far are small and that 'there isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head'.