'No evidence' of blast on crashed UPS plane
The UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) announced on Saturday that the investigations carried out and the details collected from the wreckage as well as eyewitness accounts did not prove the incidence of any explosion on board the UBS cargo plane.
The US cargo plane crashed in Dubai in September.
GCAA asserted that the investigations conducted after the retrieval of the full information contained in the two black boxes show that there is no vocal or graphic evidence or any other indicators to support the hypothesis of an explosion in the plane.
However, GCAA said this does not mean that the authority will not take the claim of an explosion seriously and that it is investigating this matter.
Al Qaeda's Yemen-based wing - Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - claimed responsibility on Friday for the UPS plane crash in Dubai, in which two crew members died, and for a foiled plot to send explosive parcels to the United States last week.
"The main evidence we have is that there was no change in pressure inside the airplane (and) I do not think this is possible if there was an explosion as there (would be) sudden pressure change," Saif Al Suwaidi, Director General of the GCAA, told Reuters by telephone.
"Evidence shows that there was an on board fire but no explosion," he added.
A UPS spokesman in the US had said the company had no independent verification of what caused its Germany-bound Boeing 747-400 plane to crash after the pilot reported fire and smoke in the cockpit.
Western officials are crediting a Saudi intelligence tip they received in early October, nearly three weeks before terrorists in Yemen managed to smuggle mail bombs onto airplanes, with heading off what could have been a series of catastrophic explosions aboard jetliners.
The Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility on Friday for sending the two bombs addressed to synagogues in the US and intercepted in Dubai and Britain.
The group also said on Friday it was responsible for the crash of a UPS cargo plane in Dubai in September and threatened even more attacks on passenger and cargo aircraft.
Investigators say they believe the UPS crash was an accident, not a terror attack, but they are not discounting the Al Qaeda claim.