Egypt slams as 'disrespectful' CNN coverage of jet crash

The Egyptian Foreign Ministry has slammed CNN's coverage of an EgyptAir plane crash as "disrespectful".

"It's disrespectful that CNN insinuates pilot suicide in #EgyptAirMS804 tragedy while families are mourning," ministry spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid tweeted on Friday.

The Airbus A320, en route from Paris to Cairo, disappeared from radar screens on Thursday at 2.45 a.m. (local time) with 66 people aboard, including 30 Egyptians and 15 French.

The French Aviation Agency said on Saturday that the EgyptAir MS804 had transmitted automatic messages indicating smoke in the cabin.

Messages transmitted by the plane indicated that there was smoke in the cabin before the data transmission broke off, but it was still too early to confirm the cause of the accident, reports quoted investigators as saying.

Egypt's Civil Aviation Ministry has not confirmed the reports.

On Friday, the Egyptian armed forces found some personal belongings of passengers and parts of the wreckage of the crashed plane in the Mediterranean 290 km north of the coastal city of Alexandria.

The Civil Aviation Ministry said in addition to the passengers' belongings, the army had also found human remains and airplane's seats.

Search operations by the army and the navy were still going on, it added.

--IANS

py/bg