Official: No Survivors in Cameroon Crash

Relatives wait after hearing the news of the missing Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 at Jomo Kenyatta Airport, Nairobi, Kenya, on Saturday May 5. Credit: AP Photo/Sayyid Azim

MBANGA-PONGO, Cameroon (AP) -- None of the 114 people aboard a Kenya Airways flight survived its crash into a thick mangrove swamp over the weekend, an official said Monday after returning from the water-filled crater left by the plane.

Asked whether anyone survived, Luc Ndjodo, a local government official in charge of the recovery effort, said: "No."

Ndjodo added he had surveyed the entire site, about the size of a soccer field, and saw no survivors: "I was there. I saw none."

The plane was submerged in murky, orange-brown swamp, with scraps of metal and plastic floating on the surface.

"We assume that a large part of the plane is underwater," Ndjodo said. "I only saw pieces."

Workers placed bodies and body parts found nearby on stretchers and carried them for 20 minutes--as close as the ambulances could get. Trees were chopped down and placed over puddles to make the walk easier. Members of the recovery team--some soldiers in camouflage and red berets, others barefoot villagers in shorts and T-shirts--used branches as walking sticks.

Much of the debris, some of it hanging from trees, was shredded beyond recognition. Some small items were intact--a white tennis shoe, a black purse of braided leather, an orange-and-blue length of cloth a woman might have worn as a skirt.

Earlier, Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport, said the plane nose-dived into the swamp and disintegrated on impact.

"The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp," Sobakam said.

The plane took off from Douala, Cameroon's commercial capital, and its wreckage was found just 12 miles from the town's outskirts. The cause of the crash remained unclear.

Among the passengers was Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent Anthony Mitchell, who had been on assignment in the region.

While the site where the plane went down was not remote, it was in a dense and hard-to-access mangrove forest. The road was dirt track, its ruts filled with water Monday after overnight rains.

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