The Citizen (Dar es Salaam)
Mkinga Mkinga
8 July 2009
Tanzania was yesterday drawn into the investigations surrounding the recent Yemeni airliner crash in the Comoros, after eight bodies, believed to be of passengers of the ill-fated plane, were located close to the Mafia Island.
If these will be positively identified as bodies of the airliner crash passengers, they will be the very first to be recovered since the plummeted into the sea as it prepared to land over a week ago.
Mafia District Commissioner Manzie Mangochie, confirmed to The Citizen yesterday that bodies of five men and tree women were fished out of the sea in islets surrounding the Mafia Island. Of the deceased, five are European and five are African.
He said the bodies were spotted on Monday evening by local fishermen at Juani, Gibondo and Mlali islets. "We have already embarked on a search operation with an expectation to locate more bodies," he said, noting that the remains of white men were located in Mlali islet which is close to Jimbo islet.
"Two of the bodies are those of two children, a boy and a girl and we have preserved them as we await further protocol," he said.
The DC, who is also a chairman for defence and security committee of the district, said he has already notified the French embassy in Dar es Salaam, adding that their ambassador promised to go over to the island to get an on-the-spot appraisal of the situation,
"We have also been communicating with the Dar es Salaam control tower and I expect them to convey the necessary message to their counterparts in Moroni in Comoro so that the ongoing search at that end can be extended to our side of the Indian Ocean," said the DC
He revealed that his office has been communicating with one Capt Chimwejo at Magogoni control tower in Dar es Salaam.
He said after the first bodies were spotted by villagers, district authorities were notified and personnel from Mafia Island Marine Park stepped in and organised an extensive search, which resulted into the location of more bodies.
"Mafia Marine Park provided a boat and other facilities that made it possible to locate and retrieve more bodies," the district boss said.
Mr Mangochie noted that this development might be of value to the Moroni search and rescue teams whose search for the past week had so far fruitless.
He said all fishermen in the area have been asked to report in case they locate any body or any suspicious debris that might be linkable to the ill-fated Yemen aircraft.
The Yemen Air Airbus 310 crashed as it prepared to land in its last leg of a journey from Paris via Marseille to Comoros, after a stopover in Yemen.
Contacted to comment yesterday, Tanzania Civil Aviation Authority (TCAA) Public Relations Officer, Mr Abel Ngapemba, said their offices were not aware of the discovery in Tanzanian waters of bodies of Yemen Air passengers.
He said: "I have tried to check with our offices in Dar es Salaam, but nobody seems to be aware of this development we are working on the information."
The Yemeni plane crashed with 142 passengers and 11 crews on board. Most of the passengers were French or from the Comoros, and only one passenger, a 14-year-plg girl, survived.
Since the crash, rescue teams have been combing the waters around the area where the plane went down, but no remains had been recovered prior to yesterday.
The flight, Yemeni Flight 626, Airbus A330-200, started its journey at Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport on Monday, June 29, and flew to southern French city of Marseille and then on to Sanaa in Yemen. At Sanaa, passengers were transferred to an Airbus 310 and departed for Moroni via Djibouti.
The Yemeni plane became the second airbus to crash into the sea in a month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on June 1, killing all the 228 passengers and crew on board, as it flew from Rio de Janeiro to Paris.
The investigations in Tanzania also involve the local police and the Coast regional police commander, Absalom Mwakyoma, confirmed the discovery of the bodies in the Indian Ocean near Mafia. "Yes, we information to the effect that some bodies have been recovered.
Right now I want to go there and see for myself, and I am getting onto our police boat to go and investigate,"Mwakyoma was quoted by Reuters as saying.
"It has not been confirmed if the bodies are from the Yemeni airline crash. That is why I am going to verify," Mwakyoma said.
Mwakyoma said police officers were also investigating reports that debris looking like aircraft parts was seen floating near the bodies.
Rescue teams have detected a signal from the plane's flight recorders but say it could take a while to reach the wreckage for it sunk deep into the sea.
On Monday, the France ambassador to Comoro announced that the search for a Yemeni jet that crashed into the sea might take longer than previously thought.
"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 wreckage 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 recorder, commonly called black box, which should contain data to help determine what happened.
French and American military experts have failed to find a single body, fuelling 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.
This notion is, however, going to change should it be confirmed that the Mafia bodies are indeed from the Yemen Air plane.
"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 wreckage and the black box," he said.
The 14-year-old survivor of the crash is said to have courageously clung to onto floating debris in the rough seas for more than 12 hours. She sustained a fractured collarbone, cuts and bruises.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2009 The Citizen. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
