– Terror threat –
The signals were picked up by French survey ship Laplace which uses acoustic detection systems to listen for the “pings” emitted by the flight recorders, France’s aviation safety agency BEA said.
The passengers were 30 Egyptians, 15 French citizens, two Iraqis, two Canadians, and citizens from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Chad, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. They included a boy and two babies.
Seven crew and three security personnel were also on board.
The crash comes after the bombing of a Russian airliner over Egypt’s restive Sinai Peninsula last October that killed all 224 people on board.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for that attack within hours, but there has been no such claim linked to the EgyptAir crash.
IS has been waging a deadly insurgency against Egyptian security forces and has claimed attacks in both France and Egypt.
Some wreckage was retrieved from the Mediterranean last month, along with belongings of passengers on board flight MS804, but no bodies have been found so far.
The plane crashed between the Greek island of Crete and the Egyptian coast after disappearing suddenly from radar screens.
In October, foreign governments issued travel warnings for Egypt and demanded a review of security at its airports after IS said it downed the Russian airliner over Sinai with a bomb concealed in a soda can that had been smuggled on the plane.
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