Civil aviation experts are not ruling out sabotage as the cause of yesterday’s crash of a Turkish Airline DC-10 jumbo jet 25 miles northeast of Paris, causing the death of 346 passengers and crew members, the largest fatalities in aviation history. Palestinian terrorists, or Turkish terrorists working in league with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, may have been aboard the plane and may have spirited aboard bombs which exploded prematurely, sources here indicated.
French officials would not comment today on last night’s declaration by the Turkish Minister of Communications, Ferda Guley, that a bomb could have been responsible for the disaster. They said, however, that a Franco-Turkish commission investigating the crash “is looking into all the possibilities.”
The sabotage theory was given credence by the fact that six bodies and pieces of fusilage were found nine miles from the crash site, indicating an explosion in the plane while in flight. Turkish terrorists working with the PFLP openly threatened the Turkish government with “reprisals” after several terrorists were killed by Turkish security forces last year.
American experts representing the McDonnel-Douglas Corp., manufacturers of the DC-10, and representatives of Lioyds Insurance Co. are participating in the investigation. Chief pilot Sam Clauzel of McDonnel-Douglas said today that there are several possibilities for the crash. He stressed, however. “It is far too early to know anything definite.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
