Yemeni crash survivor tells of ordeal

ArticleData Array ( [Article] => Array ( [article_id] => 1043487 [headline] => Yemeni crash survivor tells of ordeal [abstract] =>

The only known survivor of a deadly plane crash off the Comoros Islands has told of the hours she spent clinging to the wreckage.

[keywords] => jet, plane, Airbus, aircraft, Comoros, Yemen, Yemenia, Bahia Bakari, Bakari, survivor, crash, ordeal [content] =>

A 12-year-old girl - the only known survivor of a deadly plane crash off the Comoros Islands - has told of the hours she spent clinging to the jet's wreckage.

Bahia Bakari is being taken home to France, where she will be reunited with her father and treated for her injuries, including a broken collarbone and burned knee.

Bakari was rescued 10 hours after the Yemenia airlines Airbus A310 crashed into the Indian Ocean in the early hours of Tuesday, killing all 152 others on board - including her mother.

"She didn't feel a thing. She found herself in water," her father, Kassim Bakari, said - adding that his daughter told him other passengers had survived the crash impact.

"She could hear people talking, but in the middle of the night she couldn't see a thing. She managed to hold on to a piece of something."

French Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet praised Bakari's "admirable courage", adding she had told officials her memories of the crash.

"She said that, at a point in time, instructions were given to passengers to strap themselves in," he said.

"She said that afterwards, she felt something like electricity - that was the term she used.

Girl's survival 'truly miraculous'
  
"And then, very quickly, she found herself in the water hanging on to a piece of the aircraft with which she struggled to stay alive for more than 10 or so hours."
  
When rescuers emerged in the clear light of day, she was too weak to react.
  
"We tried to throw a life buoy. She could not grab it. I had to jump in the water to get her," one rescuer told France's Europe 1 radio, saying that she was spotted bobbing in the middle of bodies and debris.
  
"She was shaking, shaking. We put four covers on her. We gave her hot, sugary water. We simply asked her name, village."
  
The head of the government crisis cell in the Comoros said the youngster had survived astonishing odds.

"It is truly, truly, miraculous," said Ibrahim Abdoulazeb. "The young girl can barely swim."

Joyandet said that after a day spent recovering in hospital in the Comoros capital Moroni, Bakari was being flown back to France.

"Little Bahia is in the plane," he said. "We are taking her to Paris to be with her father. Doctors consider there is no problem for her to be repatriated."

Yemenia airlines, which has come under attack from victims' families angry over its safety record, said it would make an initial payment of 20,000 euros ($US28,000) to the families of each victim.

Jet banned from French airspace

Chairman Abdul Khaleq al-Qadi told reporters in Sanaa the payments would be "a first instalment," without saying when they would begin.

The announcement came amid mounting anger over the condition of the 19-year-old Yemenia jet, which had been banned from France's airspace because of doubts about its safety.

Airbus stopped manufacturing the long-haul plane in 2007.

Comoros Vice President Idi Nadhoim has criticised France over the crash, saying Paris should have alerted them that the twin-engine aircraft was unsafe.

The flight left Paris on Monday for Marseille and Sanaa aboard a modern Airbus A330 before passengers switched to the older Airbus jet to continue to Djibouti and Moroni.

In Paris, the French military said a Transall transporter taking part in the search and rescue effort picked up a signal from a rescue beacon on Wednesday, but found no bodies or large debris.

"The sea is bad, the wind is blowing and there is probably a strong current," said military spokesman Captain Christophe Prazuck.

"As always in such operations, pugnaciousness and patience are most important."

He added that a French frigate would be joining the search effort "in the coming hours," to be followed by an Italian warship otherwise assigned to NATO anti-piracy operations off Somalia.

 

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Rescuers have found a child survivor of a Yemeni airliner that crashed off the coast of the Indian Ocean archipelago of Comoros, a hospital official says.

"A child was found alive. He is now on a rescuers' boat," Ben Imani, a doctor at Moroni's main hospital said.

A Comoros Red Cross official confirmed the rescue.

"We have all that is needed - drips, equipment - to assist the child immediately," said Al fachad Salim. It was not immediately clear if the child was the same survivor reported earlier in Sanaa by a Yemenia airline official.

Salim explained that fishermen also found debris, handbags and other personal effects after the plane carrying 153 people, including 11 crew, crashed off the Comoros.

Rescuers were stationed at the shore north of Grande Comores, the largest of the three isles making up the union of Comoros, witnesses said.

The secretary general of the Comoros government Nourdine Bourhane said the control tower had lost control with the crew at around 2300 GMT (0900 AEST) during poor weather.

Government officials have set up a crisis cell at the airport. Comoros state radio had suspended normal programmes and was broadcasting readings of Koran verses. 

Witnesses at the airport said they saw the jet approaching the airport before disappearing. "I saw the plane trying to land. I went into the (arrival) terminal to meet my mother, but there was no plane," Moussa Boina said.

[content_type_id] => 3 [site_name] => World News Australia [articledate] => 1 July 2009 [articletime] => 1 July 2009 [display_order] => 0 ) [1] => Array ( [article_id] => 1043311 [headline] => Black box from crashed Yemen jet found [abstract] => One of the black box flight recorders from the Yemenia jet which crashed off the Comoros has been located, as the only survivor recovers in hospital. [content] =>

One of the black box flight recorders from the Yemenia jet which crashed off the Comoros has been located, as the only survivor recovers in hospital.

"The black box's signal was located yesterday by an aerial patrol, 40 kilometres from Grande Comore," said Cooperation Minister Alain Joyandet.

A French patrol ship, the Rieuse, was to arrive on site later Wednesday to start operations to recover the flight recorder, he added.

French rescue teams on Wednesday joined in the search for survivors of the Yemenia jetliner, more than a day after it plunged into the sea while trying to land at Moroni airport in rough weather.

Sixty-six French nationals, and numbers of Comorans resident in France, were among the 153 passengers of the Airbus A310.

A French military plane, two navy ships, Zodiac fast boats and other equipment have arrived from the neighbouring French island of Reunion to assist in the search.

A 14-year-old girl was saved from the seas near the Comoros archipelago on Africa's east coast, but the Red Cross has warned hopes of finding more survivors were slim. A nurse says the girl is "doing well" in a hospital in Comoros.

Said Mohammed, a nurse at El Mararouf hospital in the archipelago's capital city, said on Wednesday doctors would release more on the girl's condition later in the day.

Mohammed said he cared for the girl through the night. Sergeant Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio he rescued the girl after she was found bobbing in the water.

She couldn't grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so Abdilai said he jumped into the sea.

Meanwhile, Yemen's national carrier insisted on Wednesday it had a strict policy to ensure fleet maintenance and denounced speculation of technical problems.

Yemenia said in a statement it "implements a strict policy to ensure its aircraft are fully operational, with regular maintenance in line with international standards".

French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said on Tuesday that French inspectors had in 2007 found numerous faults on the plane, an Airbus A310-300, and that the airline was being closely monitored by EU authorities.

"The plane had not since then reappeared in our country," he said.

But Yemenia denounced what it said was "false information and speculation about technical problems" on the doomed plane.

Yemenia said it would "never allow one of its planes to take off unless it was in a very good condition", highlighting the fact that this was the first such incident in the history of the airline which was founded in 1961.

The company is 51 per cent owned by the government of Yemen, one of the poorest countries on the planet, and 49 per cent by Saudi Arabia.

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