Images as family and friends despair after Egyptian aircraft disappears

Passengers aboard the flight were numbered 56, alongside 10 crew members. The passenger-list consisted of 30 Egyptians, 15 French, one Briton, one Canadian, one Belgian, one Iraqi, one Kuwaiti, one Saudi Arabian, one Chadian, one Portuguese, and one Algerian.

Images have now surfaced, showing debris which was supposedly from the plane. According to reports, the debris was found off the Greek islands of Crete and Karpathos.

The images of the debris were posted by a user on pprune, an internet forum for professional pilots. The user claims that he got them from the captain of Egyptian container vessel, Maersk Ahram. A Greek frigate also reported spotting two large plastic objects floating in the sea.

They appeared to be pieces of plastic in white and red and spotted close to an area where an emergency transponder signal had been emitted. The authenticity of the pictures has however not been verified.

Egyptian Civil Aviation Minister Sherif Fathi also said the possibility of a terror attack was a "stronger" possibility than technical failure. Greek defence minister Panos Kammenos said the Airbus A320 made "sudden swerves" in mid-air, lurching 90 degrees to the left then 360 degrees to the right. It then dropped from 37,000 feet to 15,000ft before the signal was lost at around 10,000 feet.

Family and friends of passengers and crew members have, naturally, become worried and tearful as concrete reports are being awaited.

The French government has offered assistance to the government of Egypt as they frantically seeks answers in the situation which has now been said to be "very probably a terror attack."

EgyptAir has a long recorded history of Aviation tragedies, some of which include the March 19, 1972 case where Flight 763 Cairo to Aden crashed into the Shamsan Mountains on approach to Aden International Airport, killing all 30 people on board.

Earlier this year, on Flight 181 from Alexandria to Cairo, Seif Eldin Mustafa, an Egyptian man hijacked the Airbus A320 after it left Alexandria in northern Egypt and forced it to divert to Larnaca Airport in Cyprus.