No survivors of jet crash, say officials

None of the 114 people aboard a jet survived its crash into a thick mangrove swamp in Cameroon over the weekend, an official said today.

Luc Ndjodo, a local government official in charge of the recovery effort, had visited the water-filled crater where Kenya Airways jet nose-dived into dense forest.

Asked whether anyone survived, Ndjodo said: “No. I was there. I saw none.”

As workers brought out bodies and placed them in ambulances driven to within a mile or so of the crater, Ndjodo said little of the plane was visible. Only members of the recovery team were being allowed to the site.

“We assume that a large part of the plane is underwater,” Ndjodo said. “I only saw pieces.”

Earlier, Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport, said the plane nose-dived into the swamp and disintegrated on impact.

“The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp,” Sobakam had said earlier.

The plane had taken off from Douala, Cameroon’s commercial capital, and its wreckage was found 12 miles from the town’s outskirts. The cause of the crash remained unclear.

Among the passengers was Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent Anthony Mitchell, who had been on assignment in the region.

While the site where the plane went down was not remote, it was in a dense and hard-to-access mangrove forest. The road in was dirt track, its ruts filled with water after heavy overnight rains.

A US Embassy official who saw the crash site from a plane said it would have been impossible to have found it from the air without co-ordinates provided by searchers on the ground.

He said searchers in planes saw nothing when they flew over before sunset Sunday after hearing reports the plane could have gone down in the swamp.

“It’s not what you expect, a bunch of trees knocked down and charred,” said the official. “It’s just a big muddy hole, like many others out there.”

The US and France are among the nations providing aircraft and other equipment to help the Cameroonians search. A team from the US National Transportation Safety Board was expected in Cameroon tomorrow.

The wreckage was found southeast of Douala, along the Nairobi-bound plane’s flight path from the Douala airport – more than 40 hours after the Boeing 737-800 lost contact with the airport.

The plane took off an hour late because of rain, with 105 passengers and nine crew members on board. The plane issued a distress call, but then lost contact with the radio tower between 11 and 13 minutes after take off, officials said.

It was not immediately clear if the plane deviated at any point from its flight path.