Rescue teams in Cameroon resumed work at the site of the crashed Kenya Airways flight at daybreak. The plane crashed early Saturday after take-off from Doula airport in Cameroon and was found late Sunday in a mangrove swamp surrounded by forest. Katy Migiro has this report from the VOA bureau in Nairobi.
Officials say there is virtually no chance of there being any survivors among the 114 people on board.
Speaking from Cameroon, Kenyan transport minister Chirau Ali Mwakwere told VOA that he walked through knee deep mud to reach the plane on Sunday night.
"Last night I joined the governor of the region and other senior officials from Cameroon and Kenya around 7:00 o'clock at night and we all visited the site" he said. "So we saw the remains of the airplane deep in the tropical forest in a very very marshy and muddy area where the aircraft dived and three quarters of it is actually buried in the mud."
Cameroonian army and police officers hacked through the forest to recover wreckage from the plane. The Kenya government has dispatched Kenya Air Force officers to assist the Cameroonians in their efforts.
No one has yet been able to explain why the plane that was six months old crashed. The flight was delayed because of a storm and it was still raining heavily when it took off.
Kenya Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni said the plane stopped emitting emergency signals soon after the initial distress call, although the automatic device should have kept up emissions for two days.
