An EgyptAir flight from Paris with 66 people on board vanished from radar screens on Thursday, May 19 with a Greek aviation source saying it had crashed into the Mediterranean between the Greek islands and the Egyptian coast, AFP reports.
There were no immediate reports of the discovery of any debris but both Egypt and Greece said they had dispatched aircraft and naval vessels to the area on a search and rescue mission.
Twenty-six foreigners were among the 56 passengers, EgyptAir said.
France called a crisis meeting of top ministers as Prime Minister Manuel Valls said "no theory can be ruled out" to explain the plane's disappearance.
The Islamic State jihadist group has been waging a deadly insurgency against Egyptian security forces and last October claimed the bombing of a Russian airliner flying home holidaymakers from the Egyptian resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, which killed all 224 people on board.
EgyptAir said contact was lost with the flight about 280 kilometers north of the Egyptian coast, AFP says.
The Greek aviation source said the flight had disappeared from Greek radar at around 0029 GMT.
"It crashed around 130 nautical miles off the island of Karpathos," the source told AFP, referring to an island northeast of Crete.
The official said the last communication with the pilot was three minutes before the plane disappeared, and that there had been no distress call.
