Cameroon’s investigation into what caused a Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 to nose-dive into a swamp seconds after take-off will initially focus on the pilot’s decision to leave despite predictions a thunderstorm would last up to an hour more, an official familiar with the probe said on Thursday.
The searchers drove as far as they could into the swamp and then set out on foot, crawling over soggy earth until they found signs of so many lost lives. A white tennis shoe. A black purse of braided leather. A length of orange and blue cloth that a woman might have worn as a skirt.
Recovery teams tried and failed to pump water away from an airliner that crashed in a Central African swamp, then pressed ahead with their job of finding bodies in the wreckage. Rain complicated the operation just 5km from the end of the runway where the aircraft took off on Saturday on a flight from Douala to Nairobi.
A Kenya Airways plane reported missing on Saturday with 114 people aboard, was found on Sunday in southern Cameroon, the central African country’s state radio said. The radio interrupted its programming to report the find, but made no mention of casualties or the state of the aircraft.
A Kenya Airways jet that crashed after take-off in Cameroon on Saturday with 114 people on board is largely submerged in swamp and there is no chance of survivors, Cameroon’s civil protection service said on Monday. The Boeing 737-800 vanished early on Saturday shortly after leaving Douala for Nairobi in torrential rain.
Rescuers began the grisly task of removing bodies from the wreckage of a Kenyan Airways plane lying in swamps of south-west Cameroon on Monday after a crash that killed all 114 people on board. It took 36 hours to find the wreckage of the almost new aircraft 20km south-west of Douala.
The wreckage of a Kenya Airways plane that crashed with 114 people on board was found in a swamp a short distance from Cameroon’s Douala airport on Sunday, officials said, but there was no word of any survivors. The Boeing 737-800, carrying passengers from more than 20 countries, vanished on Saturday shortly after taking off from Douala for Nairobi in torrential rain.
The head of cellphone giant MTN in Cameroon, Campbell Utton (51), was among those aboard the Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 that went missing over Cameroon, media reports said on Sunday. The Boeing 737-800 aircraft, which was carrying 114 people from more than 20 countries, went missing on Saturday after leaving Douala airport.
Rescuers searched a densely forested region overnight in southern Cameroon for a Kenya-bound flight that crashed with 114 people on board after sending out a distress signal, officials said. The jet bound for the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, went down early on Saturday near Lolodorf, a town about 150km south-east of the coastal city of Douala.
No image available
/ 5 February 2007
More than 60 people were drowned off south-west Cameroon on the weekend when a motor boat crowded with passengers and cargo capsized on its way to Nigeria, witnesses and survivors said on Monday. Fon Achobang, a local newspaper reporter, said he and other colleagues saw 63 bodies being buried on Sunday after the accident.
No image available
/ 31 January 2007
Chinese President Hu Jintao began his second African tour in a year on Wednesday to boost ties with a continent that has many of the oil and commodity reserves the Asian giant needs for its ballooning economy. Hu touched down in Cameroon late on Tuesday, the first time a Chinese president has visited the Central African state.
No image available
/ 23 December 2006
As the countdown to the 2007 World Social Forum gains momentum, anti-globalisation activists from around the world are no doubt rolling up their sleeves for spirited debates on the flaws in the current economic order. In Cameroon, however, such debates are already under way.
No image available
/ 22 November 2006
For some time now, the sporadic eruption of inter-ethnic conflict in most of Cameroon, sometimes with tragic consequences, has prompted concern about the future of this Central African country. The first notable tensions between ethnic groups date back to the beginning of the 1990s.
No image available
/ 20 November 2006
As crude oil prices soar on the world market, many African oil-importing countries are starting to think more seriously about ways to lessen their dependence on the fuel. They fear that continued high spending for imported oil may jeopardise the economic growth they have registered in recent years. As a result, alternative forms of energy are starting to look more attractive.
No image available
/ 6 November 2006
Arabic-speaking armed robbers in eastern Cameroon killed a woman and stole money, jewellery and cellphones from dozens of motorists after holding up 30 vehicles on a main road, witnesses said on Monday. The assailants were hooded and dressed in military fatigues.
Geraldine Sirri was only nine years old when her mother started daily massaging her pre-pubescent breasts with a blazing hot stone to keep them flat — and keep men’s eyes and hands off her daughter. One-quarter of all Cameroonian women are said to have been victims of this painful ”breast-ironing”, as it is known.
Cameroonian Prime Minister Ephraim Inoni deplored on Friday the exploitation of thousands of child labourers in Cameroon and appealed for further international help in fighting the trade. Inoni was speaking in response to Thursday’s publication of a report on child labour by the International Labour Organisation.
A newspaper publisher in Cameroon has been sentenced to two prison terms of six months each for publishing a list of alleged homosexuals, judicial sources said on Monday. Nouvelle Afrique publisher Biloa Ayissi was convicted for defaming doctor Jean-Pierre Mayo and government Minister Gregoire Owona who were included in the list published earlier this year.
No image available
/ 1 February 2006
Cameroon’s tabloid newspapers have alleged dozens of prominent politicians, entertainers and even religious figures are gay, stirring a storm in a country where homosexuality is illegal. Many of those ”outed” by the gutter press have strongly denied the allegations and some are taking legal action, while blaming rivals for spreading the charges.
No image available
/ 26 December 2005
Cameroon, on the west coast of Africa, relies heavily on its trade in tropical wood. No one knows for sure exactly how much it makes from these exports. But according to estimates, about half is from trees illegally felled. Environmental activists have been protesting for years against such tropical rainforest logging.
No image available
/ 23 November 2005
Malaria could encourage mother-to-child transmission of HIV, according to research on the Science and Development Network website.
A boat carrying 60 passengers has sunk off Campo on Cameroon’s coast, leaving 30 people dead or missing, Cameroon’s national radio reported on Tuesday. The ramshackle vessel went down on June 30 in the West African Gulf of Guinea waters as it was on its way from Nigeria to Gabon, the radio report said.
With no telephone connection to the outside world, and a single access road that is little more than a forest trail, the village of Lomie might as well be situated at the other side of the Earth as far as many Cameroonians are concerned. For the Baka pygmies, however, the position of the settlement is more ambiguous: too accessible for loggers, but too remote for the benefits of modern life to make themselves felt.
No image available
/ 13 January 2005
Hundreds of Cameroon government employees have found themselves locked out of their offices after rolling in to work late, following a crackdown by their new Minister of Public Service, Ephraim Inoni. The education and finance ministries were the latest to be targeted on Thursday on the orders of Inoni.
No image available
/ 12 October 2004
Cameroon’s main opposition parties called on Tuesday for the Central African country’s presidential election — which veteran leader Paul Biya has been widely tipped to win — to be annulled, saying it was marred by rampant fraud. One opposition presidential candidate called the vote ”a masquerade, with overt fraud throughout the country”.
No image available
/ 11 October 2004
Cameroonians were on Monday casting their ballots in a presidential election that many ordinary citizens believe long-time leader Paul Biya is certain to win, either through fraud or because he is up against a divided opposition. Officials did their best to assuage fears that the vote would be marred by cheating.
With less than two months to go before the October 11 presidential election in Cameroon, intrigues and accusations have become the order of the day for the country’s political parties. It has also dampened hopes that the opposition will be able to unite behind a single candidate who is capable of defeating the incumbent head of state.
Mention the word "electricity" to Cameroonians and the chances are that they will laugh ruefully. For several years now, power cuts have been a fact of life in this West African country — crippling businesses and eating into economic growth. The predicted 4% growth in the country this year is significantly lower than the previous two years, and has been blamed on the erratic electricity supplies.
Cameroon has freed two journalists working for the BBC who had been detained by the military for six days on suspicion of spying in the disputed, oil-rich Bakassi peninsula. One of the journalists is South African Farouk Chothia, a producer with the BBC’s African service and a former Mail & Guardian journalist.
For years, populations in northern Cameroon have had to live with bandits and the impact of banditry on economic activities, transport and ordinary people’s lives.
Two pioneers in Aids research who had fallen out bitterly over the discovery of the virus which causes the disease announced that they had joined forces to devise a trial vaccine.
Cameroon’s minister for territorial administration, Ferdinand Koungou Edima, has been dismissed following the last-minute postponement of legislative and municipal elections scheduled for Sunday, officials in the capital Yaounde said.