No bodies from Comoros crash
2009-07-02 22:09
Moroni - Comoros President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi said on Thursday that rescuers had yet to recover any bodies from the site of the Yemenia plane crash, and appealed for more international help.
"The operations seem complicated. The scene of the crash has not been located exactly”, Sambi told reporters.
A 12-year-old girl is the only survivor of Tuesday's crash of the A310 airliner with 153 passengers and crew aboard. Bahia Bakari was flown home to France aboard a French government jet on Thursday.
Sambi had cut short his attendance at an African Union summit in Libya and returned home.
"We are appealing for help from the international community," he told reporters after visiting the command centre for the search operation.
Difficult
"We are asking for additional help to help find the victims and the black boxes and to establish the cause of the crash."
The airliner crashed into the sea and the wreck of the plane is believed to be at a depth of more than 300m.
"The difficulty in retrieving bodies is because the plane is located at a spot difficult to access," Comoros Red Cross spokesperson Ramulati Ben Ali said.
The French and US navies have provided ships and divers to help in the search. Neighbouring Madagascar has also provided search equipment.
Search teams detected signals from the jet's distress beacons on Wednesday, but had yet to locate the black box flight recorders.
- AFP