News / Egypt

More human remains recovered from EgyptAir crash site

Monday, 04 July 2016 6:34 AM [ Last Update: Monday, 04 July 2016 10:15 AM ]

A handout picture released June 16, 2016 shows a diving robot on the search vessel John Lethbridge sent down into the Mediterranean in the hunt for wreckage and black boxes from EgyptAir flight MS804. (File photo)

More human remains have been recovered from the EgyptAir plane crash site in the Mediterranean, a research committee says.

Egypt's Aircraft Accident Investigation Committee said in a statement on Sunday that a search vessel "retrieved all the human remains that were mapped at the crash location."

The remains were taken to the port of Alexandria to be examined before being sent on to the capital Cairo for DNA analysis, the committee said.

The number of victims that can be identified by the retrieved body parts is still unclear.

The vessel will return to the crash location "to conduct a new thorough scan of the seabed and to search for any human remains," it added.

On May 19, the Airbus A320 mysteriously crashed in the eastern Mediterranean en route from Paris to Cairo and all 66 people on board were killed. The cause of the crash still remains unknown.

This picture taken on May 21, 2016 shows some debris that the search teams found in the sea after the EgyptAir Airbus A320 crashed in the Mediterranean. (AFP photo)

An investigative committee that has been conducting a probe into the plane crash said Saturday that the memory chips of the plane’s black box voice recorder are intact and investigators should be able to access them.

The investigators hope that they could finally crack the mystery of the passenger jet by reading and analyzing the flight data recorder and listening to the contents of the cockpit voice recorder or the black box, the committee said.

The other black box, that had also been retrieved from the bottom of the Mediterranean, has already been accessed.

While recovered wreckage from the plane's front section shows signs of high temperature damage and soot, the data recorder also confirmed that smoke alarms had been activated before the crash.

On Monday, the Paris prosecutor's office opened a manslaughter investigation into the plane crash, but said it was not looking into terrorism as a possible cause of the crash at this stage.

Fifteen French passengers were on board the plane, along with 40 Egyptians, two Iraqis, two Canadians and one passenger each from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

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