Forensics Official Says the Remains of EgyptAir Point to Blast

An Egyptian forensics official and investigation sources said on Tuesday that the human remains retrieved from the crashed EgyptAir flight has suggested that there was an explosion on board the plane, although no traces of explosives have been detected. The assessment was based on the small size of body parts so far recovered from the Mediterranean Sea, where EgyptAir flight 804 crashed on Thursday. The forensics official said, “The size of the remains points towards an explosion, the biggest part was the size of a palm,” stressing that about 23 bags of body parts had been collected since Sunday. Meanwhile, another senior forensics official maintained that only a small number of remains had arrived so far. The official emphasised that it was too early to specify whether there had been an explosion aboard. However, French investigators have revealed that the plane did send a series of warnings indicating that smoke had been detected on board as well as other possible computer faults shortly before it disappeared. But the signal never pointed what caused the smoke. Aviation experts have posited that neither deliberate sabotage nor a technical fault could be ruled out. Investigators can only determine the cause of the explosion by carrying out chemical analysis on the debris, bags and clothes to detect the imprints of an explosion, according to people involved in two previous probes where deliberate blasts were involved.