The French aviation safety agency said Saturday that the EgyptAir A320 that crashed into the Mediterranean with 66 people aboard had transmitted automatic messages indicating smoke in the cabin.

"There were... messages emitted by the plane indicating that there was smoke in the cabin shortly before data transmission broke off," a spokesman of the Bureau of Investigations and Analysis told AFP, adding that it was "far too soon to interpret and understand the cause of the accident as long as we have not found the wreckage or the flight data recorders."