"Die Welt" says signal may have been heard, and that terrorism can't be excluded, "Spiegel" that one engine failed.
The "Spiegel" article is from yesterday.
Another point that may or may not be interesting is that France has sent 500 soldiers to the scene to help in rescue. I don't know that much about rescue logistics to know if that is pertinent or not. This info is from a news ticker, as part of a article summarizing events thus far. I haven't linked it here.
longjack
Signals from the Red Rea
According to information from specialists these could be from the flight recorder of the crashed plane. Search for the victims continues.
Scharm el Scheich - Two days after the crash of an Egyptian charter plane over the Red Sea rescue specialists received signals from the sea which could be from the flight recorder. A radar unit on a robot arm had registered the signals in the late evening, a French diplomat said. It is a positive sign. The search for the wreck and bodies would be continued in the course of the day.
In the catastrophe, all 148 passengers, among them 133 tourists from France, had been killed had on Saturday. The inquiries into the cause of an accident concentrated further on technical defects of the eleven year old Boeing 737 of Flash Airlines. Minister of Transport, Gilles de Robien, confirmed Flash Airlines "good reputation" and warned of rash speculation.
The head of the French flight supervisory authority, Michel Wachenheim, said there wouldn't be any certainty about the cause of the crash before the evaluation of the flight recorder. "We can't exclude an accident or a criminal act." The body parts discovered so far haven't shown any evidence of burning, however; a sign that there wasn't an explosion on board of the Boeing before the crash. AP
Artikel erschienen am 6. Jan 2004
"Die Welt"....Signale aus dem Roten Meer
No Indications of an Attack
The inquiries into the plane crash in El sheikh haven't yielded any indications of a terrorist attack so far. According to information from the French government, the retrieved bodies don't show the evidence of burning in order to conclude that. Thereby, an on board explosion has to be excluded.
Paris - Statements of eyewitnesses, which indicate an explosion, are lacking so far, said the undersecretary in the State Department, Renaud Muselier, today, in Paris. "There isn't an apparent reason for the assumption that this was an attack."
As a cause of the crash, the failure of one of the two jet engines is suspected. A French frigate, 16 divers, a helicopter and a special airplane are involved in the rescue together with Egyptian helpers. According to information from the French embassy in Cairo, the plane's wreckage shall not have slipped into a 1000 meter deep trench as had been feared.
Charter airline Flash Airlines has had to ward off accusations of not being technically reliable after several emergency landings. Data evaluation of the flight recorder, which still must be salvaged, should provide information about the cause of the crash. 148 people died in the crash - most of them were French vacationers.
© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2004
05.01.2004
"Spiegel-Online"....Keine Hinweise auf Anschlag
Translated by longjack