Traces of explosives were found on some of the victims of the EgyptAir crash in May, Egypt’s Civil Aviation Ministry said.
According to a ministry statement Thursday, state prosecutors are expected to take over the investigation into the crash of EgyptAir Flight 804 that killed all 66 people on board.
Egyptian law requires that a case be handed to state prosecutors “if it becomes clear to the investigative committee that there is criminal suspicion behind the accident,” the ministry said.
No cause of the crash, including terrorism, has yet been ruled out and no group has claimed to have attacked the plane.
Flight 804 plunged into the Mediterranean Sea on a flight from Paris to Cairo. Discovery of the plane’s wreckage and its cockpit voice recorder on the sea floor has raised hope that an explanation for the doomed jet’s mysterious disappearance will be determined.
In June, a research vessel with deep-water search capabilities spotted “several main locations” of wreckage and photographed the discoveries, officials said.
The M.V. John Lethridge, a British-built vessel capable of searching waters up to 6,000 meters deep, had investigators aboard who were mapping the wreckage sites.
The EgyptAir crash happened seven months after a Russian airliner went down in the Sinai Peninsula, killing all 226 people on board.
A local affiliate of the extremist Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack, and said it had shot down the Russian plane with an explosive device placed on board.
