CAMEROON: Rescuers find bodies and black box at Cameroon plane crash site

Rescue workers in Cameroon pulled remains of victims from a fetid swamp on Monday (May 7) two days after a Kenya Airways plane crashed, killing all 114 people on board. The Boeing 737-800 fell into densely forested swampland early on Saturday (May 5), minutes after leaving Douala for Nairobi in torrential rain. Rescuers said they had found one of two "black box" recorders which may shed light on the cause of the crash. The plane was found late on Sunday in a mangrove swamp near Mbanga Pongo, around 20 km (12 miles) from Douala airport. In a round crater gouged out of the bush, victims' remains lay amid clothes, personal belongings and plane debris in a hole filled with muddy water smelling of jet fuel and decomposition. Rescue workers used a mobile generator to pump away water to expose more of the wreckage, and retrieved one of the plane's black box recorders, said Celeste Mandeng, of Cameroon's Civil Protection Service. He was unable to specify whether it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice register which had been recovered. Apart from the plane's nose jammed into the mud, there was little left of the rest of the aircraft except fragments little bigger than a car door. Rescue workers had to hack through dense mangrove and forest to reach the wreckage as helicopters and planes buzzed overhead. They then returned the several kilometres to the nearest road carrying stretchers bearing victims' remains wrapped in white plastic. The wreckage was located after nearly two days of fruitless searches well over 100 km (60 miles) away in southern Cameroon, where radar-equipped helicopters and villagers on motorbikes spent most of the weekend combing tropical forest. Mandeng said early search efforts had mistakenly focused on an area much further south based on information received from a satellite tracking centre in Spain. The crash has again thrown the spotlight on air safety in Africa, the continent with the world's worst record. It dealt a severe blow to the image of Kenya Airways, one of the most successful and modern companies in the east African nation. The airline is listed on three East African bourses and is 26 percent owned by Air France's Dutch arm KLM. The six-month-old aircraft was carrying 105 passengers and nine crew from 27 nations, mostly African, with others from China, India, Europe and elsewhere. As soon as the plane disappeared, questions were asked about why a jet less than a year old would have crashed. The flight had originated in Ivory Coast, where a Kenya Airways Airbus A-310 plunged into the sea moments after takeoff in January 2000, killing all but 10 of the 179 people on board.

ITN Source | May 8, 2007

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