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SHARM EL-SHEIK, Egypt Jan. 6 — Searchers have located one of the "black box" flight data recorders from a crashed charter jet but it was too deep to be immediately retrieved, a French official said Tuesday. Rear Adm. Jacques Mazars told reporters at the popular resort that more advanced equipment was needed to retrieve the box, which was believed to be 1,970 to 2,620 feet below the sea's surface. "What is important for us is to retrieve one of the boxes," he said. A robot submarine sent by the French can operate no deeper than 1,320 feet. The seabed in...

swissinfo January 5, 2004 8:36 PM Swiss inspectors found similar faults on both Flash Airlines planes (Keystone) Switzerland’s aviation authorities say they found serious faults on both planes owned by the Egyptian carrier, Flash Airlines, over a year before one of its planes crashed. But the Federal office for civil aviation (FOCA) said it was drawing no conclusions about Saturday’s crash, which killed all 148 people on board. The office said in a statement it had found a number of problems on both aircraft, including missing navigational documents, fuel calculations that didn’t match international standards, and unsuitable emergency exit signs....

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - France said on Monday it attached little credence to a previously unknown Islamic group's claim to have brought down a plane that crashed off Egypt, killing 133 French tourists and 15 other people. Egypt again defended the safety record of Flash Airlines, operators of the Boeing 737 that plunged into the Red Sea on Saturday, but Switzerland issued a fresh statement that it had banned the Egyptian company from its airspace on safety grounds. French civil aviation authority head Michel Wachenheim said France's own checks on the doomed plane had showed "nothing abnormal." An anonymous...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A speaker who was purportedly Osama bin Laden said on an audiotape that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was the beginning of the "occupation" of Gulf states for their oil and called on Muslims to keep fighting a holy war in the Middle East. The tape is likely authentic, U.S. officials said Monday. The voice on the audiotape, which was broadcast Sunday on the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, referred to recent events - including the Dec. 13 capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and peace initiatives between Israel and the Palestinians. The speaker urged Muslims to...

Searchers 'may have detected flight recorder' Searchers hunting for the wreckage of a charter jet that crashed into the Red Sea have detected a signal that could be the plane's black box flight data recorder. The signal was detected by a radar on a robotic arm used by searchers in the area where Flash Airlines' Flight FSH604 crashed on Saturday. "It's a positive sign but nothing conclusive," said a French Embassy official, on condition of anonymity. There was no indication of how deep the signal was coming from. Experts had said the deep waters would slow recovery efforts. Most of...

An anonymous caller claiming to represent a previously unknown Islamic group says they brought down the Egyptian plane which crashed into the Red Sea on Saturday, killing 148 people. The man told an international news agency in Cairo that the Yemen-based group Ansar al-Haq (Followers of the Truth) would also attack Air France planes unless the French government drops plans to ban Islamic headscarves from state schools. There was no way to check the claim of the caller, who said he was an Egyptian member of the group. The Egyptian government has ruled out a deliberate attack on the Boeing...

The is a translated transcript of an audiotape said to be of Osama Bin Laden, aired by al-Jazeera satellite channel on 4 January, 2004: From Osama Bin Laden to his brothers and sisters in the entire Islamic nation: May God's peace, mercy and blessings be upon you. My message to you concerns inciting and continuing to urge for jihad to repulse the grand plots that have been hatched against our nation, especially since some of them have appeared clearly, such as the occupation of the crusaders, with the help of the apostates, of Baghdad and the house of the caliphate...

Rescuers on Sunday resumed searching for bodies after a charter jet full of French tourists crashed into the Red Sea, killing all 148 people aboard. Switzerland, meanwhile, revealed that it had banned the airline more than a year ago because of safety problems. Flash Airlines flight FSH604, bound for Paris with a stopover in Cairo, crashed early Saturday, minutes after taking off from the airport at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik. Officials blamed mechanical failure. Search crews on military and civilian vessels have found only small pieces of wreckage and "very few" body parts from the shark-infested waters near...

PARIS MANY children and entire families were among at least 134 French tourists killed in a plane crash off the Egyptian coast while heading home after a New Year holiday in the sun, a French airport official said yesterday. Thirty-five relatives of some of those aboard the Egyptian airliner which crashed into the Red Sea early yesterday gathered at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport to grieve and speak to counsellors. The plane also carried 13 crew members of Flash Airlines, a private firm. The head of medical services at the airport told reporters that many children were on board the...

A charter jet full of French tourists returning home after vacations in Egypt crashed into the Red Sea early Saturday, killing all 148 people aboard after an apparent mechanical failure, officials said. Searchers spent the day circling the waters in small boats looking for survivors but found only bodies, body parts and debris, including suitcases, shoes, life preservers and small bits of plane wreckage. Swimsuit-clad tourists watched the search efforts from the beach. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, President Moshe Katzav, and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz sent their condolences to the Egyptian and French governments. In France and Egypt, distraught family...

Sunday January 4, 12:54 AM Egyptian and French officials rushed to exclude terrorism as a possible cause for the crash of a charter plane after it took off for Paris from the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "The incident is absolutely not the result of a terrorist act, but is linked to a technical failure of the plane," Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher said of the disaster that officials said killed all 148 people aboard. In Paris, French Transport Minister Gilles de Robien said there was nothing to indicate that the cause of the crash was anything but an...

SHARM EL-SHEIKH - An Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying 135 mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday and eyewitnesses said they saw no sign of survivors. An unidentified relative of a passenger on the downed Egyptian jet weeping outside the Flash Airlines offices in Cairo on Saturday. (AP) The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines, disappeared from radar screens minutes after take-off from Sharm el-Sheikh airport at 0244 GMT and crashed in deep water to the southeast, official sources said. "The initial indications are that it was a...

France asks that manslaughter inquiry be opened into crash PARIS : French Justice Minister Dominique Perben asked prosecutors to open a preliminary inquiry for manslaughter following the crash of a plane in the Red Sea that killed 148 people, most of them French, his ministry said. The ministry said the request "does not prejudge in any way the causes of the catastrophe", but simply provides a legal framework for French and Egyptian investigators as they conduct their probe. Advertisement The request allows France to send investigators to the scene to work with their Egyptian counterparts to determine the cause of...

PARIS, Jan 3 (Reuters) - An Egyptian Boeing 737 carrying 148 people, mainly French tourists, crashed after it had problems taking off and tried to turn back, France's deputy transport minister said on Saturday. "There was a problem at take-off," Dominique Bussereau told reporters at Paris's main airport, where the plane was headed before it plunged into the Red Sea. "It tried to turn back and it was when trying to do this that it crashed." 01/03/04 10:10 ET

Egypt Plane Crash Kills 148; Technical Fault Blamed By Ruben Sprich Reuters Saturday, January 3, 2004; 7:15 AM SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - An Egyptian Boeing 737 airliner carrying 135 mostly French tourists crashed into the Red Sea off the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Saturday and a rescue team member said there were no survivors. "The initial indications are that it was a technical fault, but that is only preliminary," Civil Aviation Ministry Secretary-General Hassan Abo Ghanima told Reuters. He had said earlier: "There is no sign of terrorism." The plane, operated by the Egyptian company Flash Airlines,...

Local news just flashed that an Egypt Airliner has crashed in Egypt... Reporting majority of ~135 passengers are French tourists....

The top deputy of al Qaeda number two-man Ayman Al-Zawahiri has been arrested, according to "Islamist sources in London" cited by the Middle Eastern Media Research Institute on Thursday. "Abdallah Muhammed Rajab Abd al-Rahman, aka Ahmad Hassan Abu Al-Khir, who is in charge of al Qaeda finances and the right hand man of Ayman Al Zawahiri, has been arrested," MEMRI said. "Abu Al-Khir was previously sentenced to death in absentia in Egypt," the news service said, based on translations of a report earlier this week in the London-based newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. In an audiotape released two weeks ago, Al Zawahiri...