CAIRO — The Egyptian army says it has found wreckage of the missing EgyptAir flight 804, which crashed after disappearing from the radar while carrying 66 passengers and crew from Paris to Cairo.

The Egyptian army spokesman, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Samir, says in a statement posted on his Facebook page Friday that Egyptian jets and naval vessels participating in the search for the missing plane have found “personal belongings of the passengers and parts of the plane debris” 180 miles north of the city of Alexandria.

Egyptian airport officials say that investigators will inspect the debris Friday. The officials said that the chief Egyptian investigator Ayman el-Mokadam will be joined by French and British investigators as well as an expert from AirBus.

Search-and-rescue teams from several nations continue to comb the Mediterranean Sea for possible survivors and debris from the jetliner.

Shortly before the aircraft was scheduled to land Thursday morning, it abruptly turned and dropped steeply before vanishing from radar and plunging into the water between Greece and Egypt, triggering concerns of terrorism.

It was the country’s third air incident since October, eroding confidence in the safety of Egypt’s air travel and delivering another blow to the government’s efforts to revive its struggling economy and tourism sector.

EgyptAir had said earlier Thursay that bits of wreckage had been found near the Greek island of Karpathos, about 250 miles from the Egyptian coast. But a senior Greek air-safety official said on state television that the debris did not belong to the aircraft.

Investigators emphasized they were leaving open all possibilities, but a top Egyptian aviation official suggested that terrorism seemed more likely than a technical failure.

“The possibility of a terror attack is higher than a malfunction, but again, I don’t want to hypothesize,” said Egypt’s civil aviation minister, Sherif Fathy.

Alexander Bortnikov, chief of Russia’s top domestic security agency, went further, telling The Associated Press: “In all likelihood it was a terror attack.”

NO CLAIMS OF RESPONSIBILITY

U.S. officials cautioned that it was too early to determine what brought down the plane. Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said there was not yet enough evidence to “draw any conclusions.”

“There certainly are reports that it broke apart in midair that I think are credible,” Schiff said, “but the cause of that is still not known. We haven’t seen claims of responsibility yet, and we don’t have the specific intelligence to draw any conclusions yet.”

The Airbus A320 left Paris at 11:09 p.m. local time Wednesday. Nothing seemed amiss when the pilot spoke with Greek air traffic controllers at 2:26 a.m.

But shortly after entering Egyptian airspace, the plane made “sudden swerves” and dropped from 37,000 feet to 15,000 feet, said Greece’s defense minister, Panos Kammenos.

The first turn was a sharp, 90-degree veer to the east after the plane passed over Karpathos, Kammenos told reporters in Athens. Then the plane made a full circular loop – a “360-degree turn,” Kammenos said.

NO AMERICANS ABOARD

Earlier, the airline said it received a distress call from Flight 804, but the Egyptian armed forces later said they were unaware of such a signal.

Of the 66 people aboard, 56 were passengers, including two infants and one child. Seven were crew members, and three were security personnel. French authorities told reporters at a news conference that it is usual practice for EgyptAir to have three security officers onboard.

Among those aboard, the airline said, were 30 Egyptians, 15 French nationals, two Iraqis, and one passenger each from Algeria, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Chad, Kuwait, Portugal, Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

In Washington, President Obama directed U.S. officials “to reach out to their international counterparts to offer support and assistance,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Capt. Jeff Davis, said a U.S. P-3 Orion surveillance aircraft will join the search.

Officials in Paris, where the flight began, opened investigations.

“No hypothesis is favored or ruled out at this stage,” a statement from the French prosecutor’s office said.

But the sudden cut from ground contact raised parallels with more recent incidents when attacks, bombs or pilot intervention downed aircraft.

Egypt faces a range of militant threats, including a group affiliated with the Islamic State active in the Sinai Peninsula. It claimed responsibility for bringing down a Russian charter flight in October with a possible bomb smuggled aboard, killing all 224 people aboard.

In March, an EgyptAir flight from Alexandria was hijacked and diverted to Cyprus. The suspect, 59-year-old Seif Eldin Mustafa, surrendered, and all hostages were released.

In November, the same Islamic State-linked faction posted a video purporting to show one of its members striking an Egyptian navy vessel with a shoulder-fired missile.

The pilot of Flight 804 had more than 6,000 hours of flight experience. The plane had been in service for more than 17 of the previous 24 hours before the crash.

Relatives of passengers were kept in a lounge with on-site doctors and translators at the Cairo airport One man with four relatives on the plane said he knew “nothing.”

An EgyptAir spokesman said EgyptAir flights from the French capital would continue as scheduled.

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