Remains from EgyptAir wreckage suggest blast downed airliner: reports

Human remains retrieved from the site where an Egyptian airliner crashed into the sea suggest that an explosion may have brought down the aircraft, Egyptian forensic officials told news agencies Tuesday.

The pieces of the bodies recovered are small, a senior official told the Associated Press, indicating a blast likely tore apart the aircraft and scattered passengers and the wreckage.

Roughly 80 pieces have been retrieved so far.

The officials spoke to the agencies on the condition of anonymity.

Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy said last week that it was more likely that terrorism rather than a mechanical failure brought down the Airbus A320 on May 19, killing all 66 people on board.

The plane, an EgyptAir flight, had been flying from Paris to Cairo when it disappeared from radar screens over the Mediterranean Sea around 2:30 a.m. on May 19.

Automated messages sent from the aircraft in the minutes before the crash said smoke was detected on board, near the nose of the plane and in one of the aircraft's bathrooms, French investigators said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sissi said earlier this week that "all scenarios" were being considered in the investigation of the crash.

Egypt has been fighting an Islamist insurgency, including with an Islamic State affiliate, in the Sinai Peninsula.

In October, a bomb smuggled onto a Russian flight departing from Egypt's Sharm al-Sheikh exploded mid-air, downing the airliner and killing more than 200 passengers.