CAIRO, (): Search crews found human remains, luggage and passenger seats Friday from the EgyptAir jetliner that fell out of the sky over the Mediterranean Sea, as investigators tried to determine whether the disaster was the work of terrorists.
With no bodies to bury yet, relatives and friends of some of the 66 people on board held special prayers in mosques for the victims.
But the mystery remained over why the Airbus A320 — which had been cruising normally in clear skies on a nighttime flight from Paris to Cairo early Thursday — suddenly lurched left, then right, and plummeted into the sea, never issuing a distress signal.
Egyptian authorities said they believe it may have been an act of terrorism, as have Russian officials and some aviation experts, but so far no hard evidence has emerged.
No militant group has claimed to have brought down the aircraft.
Three European security officials said the passenger manifest for EgyptAir Flight 804 contained no names on terrorism watch lists. The manifest was leaked online and has not been verified by the airline.
French aviation investigators have begun to check and question all baggage handlers, maintenance workers, gate agents and other ground crew members at Paris’ Charles De Gaulle Airport who had a direct or indirect link to the plane before it took off.
Experts said answers will come only with examination of the wreckage and the plane’s black box recorders. But retrieving them may take time. The water is 8,000 to 10,000 feet deep in the area where the jetliner is thought to have gone down, roughly halfway between Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria and the Greek island of Crete.