Cairo, May 20 (RHC)-- Three French investigators and a technical expert from Airbus arrived in Cairo early on Friday to help investigate the fate of a missing plane with 66 passengers on board, which disappeared as it approached Cairo on a flight from Paris on Thursday.

Egyptian authorities have announced that they found body parts and pieces of debris from the missing EgyptAir plane, 180 miles north of the Mediterranean coastal city of Alexandria.

The Egyptian navy has also found some of the passengers' belongings in waters close to Alexandria and is sweeping the area looking for the plane's black box, the military said in a statement.

For his part, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi spoke of his "utmost sadness and regret" at the crash. 

Search teams continued to scoured the Mediterranean Sea on Friday, hunting for the jet that disappeared in a crash that Egypt said may have been caused by a terrorist attack.