Comoros Crash Probe May Take Some Time
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The search for a Yemenia jet that crashed into deep water off the Comoros may take longer than previously thought, France's ambassador to the Indian Ocean archipelago said.
One teenage girl survived and 152 others are presumed dead after the Yemenia Airbus A310-300 crashed into the sea last Tuesday as it attempted to land in poor weather. Rescue teams have abandoned the hunt for survivors.
"The search could take longer than we previously thought. Comoros does not have maps of the seabed," Ambassador Luc Hallade told reporters in the capital Moroni.
He said France was sending a ship to help determine the depth of the wreck and what equipment would be needed to reach the fuselage -- but it would not arrive for at least a week.
Officials say the cause of the crash remains unknown. French investigators said on Sunday they had detected a signal from the flight data recorders which should contain data to help determine what happened.
French and American military experts have failed to find a single body, fueling speculation most of the dead remain trapped in the submerged fuselage of the doomed flight IY 626.
"The fruitless search for bodies... leads us to assume the passengers remained prisoners inside the aircraft," said Comoros' army chief Colonel Ismael Moegni Daho.
"The search for survivors, led by an American team that made more than 20 flights over the area, has been abandoned and the operation now focuses on finding and retrieving the wreck and the black boxes," he said.
The sole known survivor of the crash was a 14-year-old girl who clung onto floating debris in rough seas for more than 12 hours, suffering a fractured collar bone, cuts and bruises.
Prayers replaced celebrations to mark Independence Day on Monday.
France and the Comoros have enjoyed close, but at times strained ties since the islands' independence in 1975, with frequent disputes over the nearby island of Mayotte.
"France is a friend, but we will never cease to claim Mayotte," President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi said in an Independence Day address to the nation of about 800,000 people.
The jet had taken off from the Yemeni capital Sanaa, but many of the passengers had come from France aboard an Airbus A330 which flew the Paris-Marseille-Yemen legs of the flight.
