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Video Shows French Troops Securing Mali Crash Site


French military helicopters fly above the crash site of Air Algerie flight AH5017 near the northern town of Gossi, Mali, July 24, 2014.
French military helicopters fly above the crash site of Air Algerie flight AH5017 near the northern town of Gossi, Mali, July 24, 2014.

The French army released on Sunday new video of French forces securing the site of the Air Algerie plane crash in Mali.

Pictures showed French troops securing the crash zone or receiving material and equipment from French soldiers of Sangaris Force based in Central African Republic (CAR) and the arrival on site of experts of French and Malian aviation investigating units of the French and Malian Gendarmerie.

Shortly after taking off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, Flight AH5017 crashed last Thursday in northern Mali. The plane was carrying 118 passengers and crew, nearly half of them French, en route from Burkina Faso to Algeria.

The first data recorder was found Thursday, hours after the plane crashed into the desert. U.N. peacekeepers in Mali found the second black box of the Air Algerie plane at the remote disaster site on Saturday.

The plane's black boxes will be transferred to France for analysis, the French embassy in Mali said on Sunday, as officials prepared for the process of identifying the remains of the dead.

Debris remains strewn across the site.

The team of aviation and criminal investigators, which arrived at the site on Saturday, will try to determine what caused the plane to crash in a desolate part of Mali early on Thursday.

More than 200 French, Malian and Dutch troops from the United Nations force in Mali secured the site ahead of the investigators' arrival.

Some information for this report provided by Reuters, AP and AFP.

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