Paul Ohia With Agency Report
29 December 2003
Lagos — The coffins of the 76 Lebanese victims who died in plane crash in Benin Republic Christmas day were flown home yesterday from Cotonou airport aboard a French military plane.
The plane also carried the remains of four other people, two were Iranian and two unidentified. The bodies of 15 Bangla-deshi United Nations peacekeepers who were also among the 130 or so killed in the crash were flown out later.
Benin Republic held an interdenominational service yesterday in memory of those killed in the plane crash which claimed 133 lives mostly Lebanese just as investigation has commenced on the cause of the accident. 22 people survived the mishap.
A military spokesman in the Bangladesh capital, Dhaka, said its soldiers had been returning home on leave.
Thirteen of them had been serving as UN peacekeepers in Sierra Leone. Two others had been stationed in Liberia, he said.
Another 10 people are still missing after the Beirut-bound plane plunged into the sea shortly after taking off from Cotonou, Benin's main city.
Twenty-two people survived, including the Lebanese pilot of the Boeing 727, which was carrying 161 people.
French aviation experts have arrived in Benin to help the authorities decode the black box flight recorders recovered from the wreckage.
Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid said on Saturday the plane appeared to have been overloaded.
"It appears that the number of passengers exceeds the normal number, in addition to the load, which it appears was very much in excess," he told reporters in Beirut after visiting Benin.
The plane belonged to a charter airline called Union des Transports Africains (UTA).
It is reportedly controlled by Guinean and Lebanese owners and is unrelated to the former French airline UTA. The company operates between Africa, Lebanon, and Dubai.
It had been denied registration in Lebanon for failing to fulfil "technical requirements", the Lebanese press quoted Transport Minister Najib Miqati as saying.
Narrating how the accident occurred eyewitnesses said the Boeing 727, carrying mostly Lebanese expatriates heading home for holidays, clipped a building at the end of the runway at the airport in Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital, before plunging into the Atlantic Ocean.
Emergency teams are still working to retrieve many of the bodies of the victims and authorities are making arrangements for their return.
Later on Saturday a plane carrying 15 survivors arrived in Beirut. Of those that arrived in Beirut on Saturday, many were seriously injured. The injured were rushed to the American University hospital.
"We will bring everybody back to Lebanon. The bodies of the dead will arrive in the coming 48 hours, " said Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid who accompanied the flight.
Some survivors told amazing tales of how they managed to live through the incident.
One 27-year-old man told Sadler that as part of the plane began to disintegrate after it hit the building, he was flipped in his seat and found himself flung into the air.
The man landed in the sea, still strapped into his chair. He then unbuckled the seat belt and swam to shore. The flight originated in the Guinean capital Conakry, and stopped in Freetown, Sierra Leone, picking up the Lebanese along the way.
It was bound for Beirut, Lebanese Transportation Minis-ter Najib Mikati said. An investigation into the accident has begun.
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