CAIRO, May 23 (Aswat Masriya) – Egypt asked France to provide it with voice recordings of all conversations between the crashed EgyptAir plane’s pilot and air traffic control, a state-run newspaper reported on Monday.

Egypt’s flag-carrier airline had announced early Thursday morning that its flight MS804, which had 66 persons on board, vanished off the radar 16 km (10 miles) into Egyptian airspace as it was crossing the Mediterranean at 2:45 AM Cairo time en route from Paris to Cairo.    

France, where the plane was manufactured, is taking part in the investigation because it is the country with the second largest number of passengers on board the flight. Three French investigators and a technical expert from Airbus arrived in Cairo Friday morning to join the investigation. 

The Egypt-led committee asked France’s representative for “all recordings” of conversations between air traffic control and the pilot, as well as conversations between the pilot and European air traffic controllers that the plane passed by, through the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, Eurocontrol, the head of Egypt's Air Accidents Investigation department Ayman al-Moqadem said, according to Al-Ahram newspaper.

The Egyptian military said in statements on Friday that its naval forces discovered debris, personal belongings of passengers, luggage, aircraft seats, and body parts in the Mediterranean Sea, 290 km north of Egypt’s coastal city of Alexandria.   

The 12-year-old Airbus A320-232 jetliner had 56 passengers on board – 30 Egyptians, 15 French nationals, two Iraqi nationals, a British national, a Saudi national, a Portuguese national, a Belgian, a Kuwaiti, a Chadian, an Algerian, and a Canadian. It also had a 10-member crew on board.  

Black boxes not found yet

The cause behind the crash remains unknown. The plane’s black boxes, pieces of equipment that record details about a flight and help pinpoint the cause of a crash, are yet to be retrieved.  

Moqadem said, according to Ahram, that efforts are underway to locate the two boxes guided by the last point at which the plane could be detected on the radar of Cairo’s Air Navigation Center after the plane entered Egyptian airspace. The plane was last detected in an area where Egyptian and Greek airspaces overlap, Moqadem added.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi said on Sunday that finding the black boxes is a priority for Egypt, and that an Egyptian robot submarine has been deployed in the Mediterranean for that purpose.

Urging journalists not to make speculations about the crash, Sisi said that “all scenarios are possible” and the investigation may take time.

The U.S. Navy is taking part in the search for the plane’s wreckage at sea, the U.S. embassy in Cairo said on Sunday. Moqadem said that French naval vessels will also join the search in coordination with Egyptian teams.

Supreme State Security Prosecution

The Egyptian investigation committee handed the first batch of the plane’s debris to Supreme State Security Prosecution to continue the criminal aspect of the investigation, Moqadem added.

After the prosecution completes its part, it will return the debris to the investigation committee to resume its work on the technical aspect of the probe.