Gulf | Yemen
Sole known survivor of Yemen crash flies to Paris
Despite a fractured collarbone, a teenage girl clung to the wreckage of a plane for more than 13 hours before rescuers found her floating in the Indian Ocean, authorities said.
- AP
- Published: 23:09 July 1, 2009
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Comoros: Despite a fractured collarbone, a teenage girl clung to the wreckage of a plane for more than 13 hours before rescuers found her floating in the Indian Ocean, authorities said.
The only known survivor of the crash, she was being flown back to Paris on Wednesday night.
The Yemenia Airbus 310 jet was carrying 153 people when it went down in howling winds early Tuesday in the sea north of the Comoros Islands.
French officials late Wednesday retracted claims that one of the plane's black boxes had been found.
French Commander Bertrand Mortemard de Boisse said that a signal detected from the debris of Yemenia Flight IY626 was from a distress beacon and not from one of the plane's black boxes.
The flight data and cockpit voice recorders in those black boxes are crucial to help investigators determine the cause of the crash off this former French colony.
An Associated Press reporter saw 14-year-old Bahia Bakari in a Comoros hospital Wednesday as she was visited by government officials.
She was conscious with bruises on her face and gauze bandages on her right elbow and right foot.
The girl was traveling with her mother, who is feared dead. They had left Paris on Monday night to see family in the Comoros.
The girl left Wednesday night on a chartered executive jet and would be put in a Paris hospital upon arrival.
The girl's father told French radio that his oldest daughter could "barely swim" but managed to hang on.
Kassim Bakari, who spoke with his oldest daughter by phone, said Bahia was ejected and found herself beside the plane.
"She couldn't feel anything, and found herself in the water. She heard people speaking around her but she couldn't see anyone in the darkness," Bakari said on France's RTL radio. "She's a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that."
Sgt. Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio that Bahia was too weak to grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so he jumped into the sea to get her. He said rescuers gave the trembling girl warm water with sugar.
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