Divers return from a search mission on Galawa Beach 35km from Mornni, Comoros as the search continued for survivors of Yemenia Flight 626, which crashed off Comoros. -- PHOTO: AP
NAIROBI (Kenya) - EIGHT bodies that have washed ashore in Tanzania may be from a plane that plunged into the Indian Ocean with 153 people onboard, Yemeni authorities said. Only one 12-year-old girl survived the crash.
SEARCH FOR BLACK BOXES
The black boxes are believed to be lying between 500 to 1,200m under the surface of the ocean, French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said on Monday.
France is sending special robots able to operate on the sea floor to the Comoros, expected to arrive this Sunday.
The Yemeni committee overseeing the investigation of last week's Yemenia 626 crash said in a statement on Tuesday that search and rescue teams in Comoros received a report from Tanzanian authorities informing them that bodies of the victims of the crash and some wreckage were located off the shores of Tanzania, some 595km away from Comoros.
The committee did not say how the bodies had been identified, give details about the debris or elaborate further. There have previously been several false reports about the recovery of bodies and of survivors.
Officials say they hope locating the plane's black boxes will assist them to find the remains of the plane and passengers. The search has been narrowed down to an area 300m in diameter, said Ali Abou Abasse, a senior Comoran police officer coordinating the search and rescue site at the coastal town of Mistamiouli.
Investigators have concluded that the black boxes from the plane are too deep to be reached by divers, a French official said.
A French submarine picked up signals from the plane's two black boxes on Sunday but no one has yet located the boxes, which contain the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
The French official, speaking from a crisis unit set up at the French embassy in Comoros after the crash, said two teams of investigators from the French navy and the French aviation agency BEA were trying to determine the exact zone where the black boxes can be found.
The teams are using equipment that allows them to pick up signal beacons but cannot pinpoint the direction or distance of the sound, he said, declining to give his name. -- AP
