ALAN RAYBOULD, Abidjan | Tuesday 8.45am.
AIRLINE industry officials are gathering in Abidjan on Tuesday to begin an inquiry into the crash of a Kenya Airways plane off Ivory Coast that killed 169 passengers and crew.
Ten people are known to have survived Sunday’s crash, but rescuers late on Monday gave up hope of finding anyone else alive. ”The chances of finding any more survivors are zero,” a military attache at the French embassy said.
Among the survivors was one man who spent four hours swimming against the notoriously strong Atlantic currents off the Abidjan coastline to reach the shore.
State television in Ivory Coast said that 95 bodies had been pulled from the sea. It said that the search for the remaining bodies will resume on Tuesday, and investigators could also begin the search for the ”black box” flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
The plane crashed in deep water around three kilometres off the coast and state television warned that the search could take days if not weeks. Ivorian newspapers are beginning to question the incapacity of their poorly equipped rescue services to respond quickly after the plane went down at around 21.08 GMT on Sunday night.
”It was frustrating to see them staring out at the expanse of black ocean in that moonless night, without being able to gauge where the plane with its 179 prisoners might be,” evening daily Ivoir’Soir said in its Monday edition. Ivory Coast’s military ruler General Robert Guei, in power since a coup d’etat in December, visited survivors at Abidjan’s private Pisam hospital, thanking God for their escape. — Reuters