Up to 34 Egyptian officers died in crash

Wednesday, November 3, 1999

CAIRO [MENL] -- Up to 34 Egyptian military officers, including a brigadier and a colonel, died in the EgyptAir Flight 990 crash in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Massachussetts as they returned from training in the Apache helicopter, security sources said on Tuesday.

The sources said the officers completed a training course in the Apache and were returning to Cairo when the plane, which contained 217 passengers, crashed. The cause of the crash was not known but President Hosni Mubarak ruled out a terrorist bombing.

U.S. officials investigating the crash, however, would not rule out an attack although they said they have no such evidence yet. The officials said this appeared unlikely as the Boeing 767 was probably in one piece when it hit the ocean.

The identities of the Egyptian officers were not reported. Security sources said the loss of so many officers represented a blow to the Egyptian military, particularly the Air Force, the most advanced service. The crash also might delay Egypt's absorption of Apache helicopters bought from the United States.

Earlier, sources disagreed whether the officers were from the air force, navy or military. Some sources said the officers were from the anti-aircraft defense branch on a training course in the United States.

Egyptian experts have also not ruled out a bombing attack. "The disaster could have been brought about either by an explosion resulting from a technical problem or by an act of sabotage, in other words a bomb attack," aeronautical engineer Atef Hassanein told the Al Gomhuriya daily.

The editor of Al-Gomhuriya, Samir Ragab, a confidant of Mubarak, urged U.S. authorities to urgently investigate suggestions that a U.S. missile test may have caused the crash, citing the unexplained explosion of a TWA airliner in 1996. "There have been persistent reports that the TWA plane exploded because of a missile mistakenly fired from a land base" in the United States, he said.

Mubarak agreed that authorities must determine whether three airplane crashes in the same area off the northeast coast of the United States since 1996 represented a coincidence. "There may be something in the atmosphere or weather conditions may be sometimes very tough there," he said. "So I think it should be investigated by the United States and if it is needed to change the routes, the airways, depending on the discussions and the assessment of the situation in this part of the world."