The EgyptAir tragedy took a heartbreaking toll on three young children who were orphaned after their parents — who had traveled to Paris for life-saving cancer surgery for their mother — perished aboard Flight 804.
Their 6-year-old son and two infant daughters were waiting for their father, Ahmed el-Ashry and mom, Reham Mosad at the Cairo airport when the Airbus A320 plunged into the Mediterranean Thursday with 66 people aboard.
The tragic couple were returning to Egypt after Mosad’s cancer treatment was deemed a success.
Her husband of eight years, a pharmacist, sold the family’s apartment and car to pay for the medical care.
“Ahmed did everything to save his beloved wife,” family friend Muhammad El Shennawi told the UK’s Daily Mail.
“I asked him not to go to Paris for the treatment, but to try to find a hospital here in Egypt that could treat her — because of the huge cost.”
Meanwhile, it was reported that vandals had scrawled in Arabic the ominous threat, “We will bring this plane down’’ on the underside of the jet some two years before it crashed.
The New York Times quoted local officials saying it had been the work of Cairo airport employees, who also wrote the words “traitor’’ and “murderer.’’
The officials said the graffiti was linked to domestic politics rather than terrorism and was directed against the country’s president, Abdel Farrah el-Sisi. Similar graffiti was found in other parts of Cairo after former president Mohamad Morsi was ousted by the military, the Times report said.
In other developments:
- Friends and relatives of the victims expressed frustration about the lack of information about the crash. That was likely compounded Saturday when Egyptian officials denied a report from the nation’s state-run media that the plane’s “black boxes’’ had been found.
- The search continued for the cockpit voice and flight-data recorders about 180 miles north of Alexandria, one of the deepest parts of the Mediterranean. Pings from the boxes can be detected for about 30 days.
- Egypt released the first photos of debris on Saturday, including an uninflated life vest, a seat, a purse, shoes and a scarf.
- French officials confirmed that smoke had been detected in multiple spots on the plane moments before it fell.
Seven messages over three minutes from the plane’s automatic detection system signaled smoke in a bathroom and in the cockpit.
The data also included alarms related to a cockpit window heating up and two flight-control computers malfunctioning.
Experts said the signals mean a technical failure could not be ruled out.
No terror group has claimed responsibility for downing the flight .
An Airbus A320 pilot told The Telegraph of London data suggest an “internal explosion” tore through the right side of the plane and blew out the windows of the cockpit.