Egypt says signals picked up from doomed plane's black boxes

CAIRO — Egypt says a French ship has picked up signals from deep under Mediterranean Sea, presumed to be from black boxes of the EgyptAir plane that crashed last month, killing all 66 passengers and crew on board.

The Civil Aviation Ministry is citing a statement from the committee investigating the crash as saying the vessel Laplace is the one that received the signals.

Wednesday's statement says that a second ship, John Lethbridge affiliated with the Deep Ocean Search firm, will join the search team later this week.

Locator pings emitted by flight data and cockpit voice recorders, known as the black boxes, can be picked up from deep underwater.

The search for the EgyptAir plane that crashed May 19 killing has narrowed to a 5-kilometer (3-mile) area in the Mediterranean.

EgyptAir Flight Recorder Found Damaged

The cockpit flight recorder of EgyptAir flight 804 was recovered on Thursday, according to Egyptian investigators. The so-called "black box," however, was damaged. The memory unit—"the most important part of the recorder," according to officials—was found. The flight crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in circumstances that are thus far unknown. The Airbus A320 took off from Paris last month and was bound for Cairo.