The EgyptAir plane reportedly missing between Paris and Cairo has crashed over the Mediterranean, French President Hollande has confirmed, according to the BBC.
Published : 19 May 2016, 06:12 PM
Flight MS804 left Charles de Gaulle Airport at 11:09pm Paris time on Thursday with 66 people on board and vanished over the Mediterranean Sea.
Hollande told a press conference that the plane had crashed, but said it was too soon to speculate as to the cause, according to ABC News.
"No hypothesis can be ruled out," he was quoted as saying.
Egypt's Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathy, however, said a terrorist act cannot be ruled out but shied away from using the term "crash".
According to ABC News, the minister said he would use the term "missing" until debris is found in order to be "practical."
"I haven't seen, how do you call it, the bodies.. I haven't seen, how do you call it, the wreckage of the aircraft," he told a press conference.
"There might be a high possibility that a crash has been there — and it might be a very high possibility but I'm only trying to use the term that should be used," he added.
Fathy stressed he did not want to speculate about what happened but when pressed by reporters he said the possibility of a terror attack was stronger than that of a technical failure, says ABC News.
Egyptian and Greek authorities are searching for the plane, which was flying at an altitude of nearly 37,000 feet when it disappeared from radar shortly before it was due to land.
Almost immediately after entering Egyptian airspace the plane swerved sharply and then lost altitude before it dropped off radar, Greece's Defence Minister Panos Kammenos told a press conference.
When the plane vanished it was about 175 miles away from Egypt's coast, according to officials.