Little hope for Cameroon survivors
Published on : 07/05/2007
Start here..
Compare all energy suppliers
9 out 10 can save money!
Wreckage of the Kenyan Airways plane which crashed in Cameroon on Saturday has been found in a mangrove swamp.
Hopes of survivors among the aircraft's 105 passengers and nine cabin crew – including five Britons and 22 other nationalities – have all but disappeared.
The six-month old Boeing 737-800 was located roughly 12 miles south-east of Douala in southern Cameroon by local residents.
Earlier search efforts had centred on the town of Lolodorf, 90 miles south-east of Douala, but now it appears the plane came down much closer to the airport where it landed en route from the Ivory Coast to the Kenyan capital of Nairobi.
A dense canopy of trees and the difficult terrain of the mangrove swamp prevented the crash site being discovered earlier.
Local residents had heard a loud explosion at the time of the crash, which is believed to have occurred in an electrical storm.
Although the airline's 23-strong fleet has a good safety record, this weekend's crash is not the first for the firm. In 2000, one of its fleet crashed into the ocean after leaving the Ivory Coast. Only ten people out of 179 onboard survived.
