Forensic Evidence on Burnt Body From EgyptAir Crash Suggest Possible Explosion

The crash of the EgyptAir jet last Thursday might have been caused by an explosion as evidenced by the retrieved human remains, Egyptian forensics officials suggest.

The Associated Press quoted a senior Egyptian forensics official saying the remains that were recovered from the Mediterranean Sea where EgyptAir Flight 804 crashed showed signs of burns. The burns are small in size that an explosion could have caused the crash.

"The size of the remains points towards an explosion, the biggest part was the size of a palm," forensics official said in a news report. A total of 23 bags containing human body parts had been collected from the site.

The Egyptian forensic team was only able to collect 80 body parts, which were all very small and some showing signs of burns.

"There isn't even a whole body part, like an arm or a head," said the forensic official in a report from ABC News. He said that at least one part of an arm shows signs of burns - an indication that it might have belonged to a passenger "sitting next to the explosion."

However, the head of Egypt's forensic agency Hisham Abdel-Hamid dismissed the idea of a blast as "baseless" speculation, and that with the small number of human remains collected, it was too early to specify whether there had been an explosion.

Aviation experts have contradicting opinions regarding the matter. According to one aviation expert, such damage was unlikely if the plane had been intact when it hit the water. However, another said that water impact could have such a devastating effect on human bodies.

Egypt's investigative team said that the priority is to retrieve the black boxes and to recover more bodies.

EgyptAir Flight 804 flying from Paris to Cairo crashed last Thursday, killing all 66 people on board.