[ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] US presidential hopeful Donald Trump called Thursday’s deadly EgyptAir plane crash "another terrorist attack," on his Twitter account.His comments came after the flight from Gay Paree to Cairo carrying 66 people on board crashed in the Mediterranean sea early on Thursday morning.
Egyptian and Greek Sherlocks are scrambling to locate debris and find out the causes of the crash.
The de-facto Republican nominee, referring to the plane crash, wrote: "Looks like yet another terrorist attack. Airplane departed from Gay Paree. When will we get tough, smart and vigilant? Great hate and sickness!"
Egypt’s minister of civil aviation said Cairo would not rule out the possibility of a terrorist attack behind the missing plane. Around the same time, Russia’s domestic intelligence chief said that "apparently, it is a terrorist attack."
It is not the first time the Republican frontrunner has linked a tragedy to terrorism. After the mass shooting in Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party, in December, which killed 14 people, Trump blamed "radical Islamic terrorism" and called for temporary ban on Muslims entering the US.
In a press statement at the time, the tycoon-turned-politician called "for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on."
Former US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, a Republican who served in Democratic President Barack Obama
teachable moment...
’s administration, said Trump’s tweet came too soon before officials had a chance to discover what happened.
"It prejudges the outcome," Gates told MSNBC. "It’s always better to wait until you act - know what the facts are before you open up. I realize that’s a very unusual thing in American politics, but it ought to be tried occasionally."