CAIRO, Jul 4 (Aswat Masriya) - Egyptian investigators said on Sunday that they have gathered human remains from the site in which the EgyptAir flight MS 804 fell into the Mediterranean, and are carrying out DNA tests to identify the victims.  

The passenger flight crashed into the Mediterranean about 280 km off the Egyptian seacoast en route from Paris to Cairo last May. It was carrying 66 people, including 30 Egyptians and 15 French nationals.

The committee said in its statement that it has located the human remains surrounding the site of the plane crash, using a ship leased by the Egyptian government and help from Egyptian and French forensic experts.

"The ship headed to the Alexandria port to hand the remains to forensic officials and the public prosecutor," the committee said, adding that the ship is due to return and further comb the site of the crash to ensure there are no human remains left.

Egyptian investigators said on Saturday that board components of cockpit voice recorder (CVR), one of the black boxes of the EgyptAir flight, were replaced to enable the reading of recorders of the CVR memory units.

Egypt sent the flight's black boxes, the CVR, and the flight data recorder (FDR) to France to be repaired after they were found damaged in the Mediterranean.

The black boxes are crucial for piecing together the causes of the plane crash which are still unknown more than a month after the jet plunged into the sea.

Egypt's Cabinet of Ministers said that the disappeared passengers of the plane can all be considered dead.

The chairman of EgyptAir, Safwat Muslim, said in June that the company has agreed to allocate a compensation of $25,000 to the families of the victims of the drowned plane.