2 July 2009
Lagos — A 12-year-old girl, Baya Bakari, who is the only survivor of the Yemenia plane that crashed in Comoros Island has narrated how she was thrown into the ocean and watched her aircraft sink. 152 others are presumed to have perished in the accident.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) reported yesterday that Bakari, who was found clinging to some debris two hours after the crash, told her father at a hospital in Yemen that she heard voices around her in the Indian Ocean, but could not see anyone. The plane, going to the Comoros Islands from Yemen's capital Sanaa, came down in bad weather with 153 on board.
Bakari, who lives in Paris with her family, remains in hospital in Moroni treated for injuries said to include a fractured collar bone and burns. French officials said late yesterday that she was 12 years old, contradicting earlier reports that she was 14.
Speaking from Paris, her father, Kassim Bakari, said she was thrown from the plane as it hit the water. He said she clearly recalled the chaos of her time in the water.
"She said, 'Papa, we saw the plane going down in the water. I was in the dark, I couldn't see a thing.
"'(And) on top of that daddy, I can't swim well and I held on to something, but don't really know what'.
"She's a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that," he said, describing her as "fragile" and barely able to swim.
Mr Bakari recalled how he said goodbye to his wife and daughter at the airport as they headed to the Comoros.
"I kissed them both, then my wife turned around, she looked at me and she waved, and my daughter she didn't do anything, and that was the last time I saw my wife alive, because my daughter... I will see her again I hope , but for my wife it was the last time."
French officials in Moroni praised the girl's courage. Interna-tional Co-operation Minister Alain Joyandet described her rescue as a "true miracle".
"She is a courageous young girl. She really showed an absolutely incredible physical and moral strength."
An uncle, Ali Abdou, who visited the girl in hospital in Moroni, told the BBC she did not yet know that her mother had died.
She was scheduled to be transferred back to Paris for treatment later yesterday, he added.
"She is conscious, speaking well, (she) is ok. She was joking, she was chatting, we laughed together.
"It's a miracle. It was God's will," Abdou said.
Many of the passengers were travelling to the Comoros Islands but had begun their journey in Paris or Marseille on another jet operated by Yemenia, the national airline of Yemen, before boarding flight IY626 in Sanaa.
The European Union (EU) and France have both said they highlighted safety concerns over Yemenia planes and said the jet that crashed had not flown into EU airspace since 2007.
But no official cause for the crash has yet been found. Earlier yesterday, a French government minister in the Comoros capital, Moroni, said a detected signal thought to be from one of the plane's "black box" flight recorders was in fact a distress beacon.
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