Official points to blast
CAIRO — A senior Egyptian forensics official said human remains recovered from the crash site of EgyptAir Flight 804 have burns on them and are “very tiny,” which suggests an explosion may have taken place in midair on board the aircraft.
The official is on the Egyptian forensic team and has personally examined the remains, kept at a Cairo morgue. He said the body parts are “so tiny” and that at least one piece of a human arm has signs of burns — an indication it might have “belonged to a passenger sitting next to the explosion.”
All 80 pieces that have been brought to Cairo so far are small. “There isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head,” said the official.
“But I cannot say what caused the blast,” he said. He did not say whether traces of explosives were found on the remains.
The expert's comments mark a new dramatic twist surrounding last week's crash, which still remains a mystery. The plane's black boxes have yet to be found and photographs of retrieved debris published by the Egyptian military over the weekend were not charred and appear to show no signs of fire.
Egyptian officials have said they believe terrorism is a more likely explanation than equipment failure, or some other catastrophic event, and some aviation experts have said the erratic flight reported by the Greek defense minister suggests a bomb blast or a struggle in the cockpit.
But so far no hard evidence has emerged on the cause of the disaster.
An independent Cairo daily, al-Watan, quoted an unnamed forensics official as saying the plane blew up in midair — but that it has yet to be determined whether the blast was caused by the an explosive device or something else. The official further said the remains retrieved so far are “no larger than the size of a hand.”
In a search for clues, family members of the victims gave been arriving today at the Cairo morgue forensics' department to give DNA samples to help identify their kin.
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