Skip to main content

Fifteen more bodies found from Air France crash

Monday, June 08, 2009 RECIFE, Brazil: Further fifteen bodies have been recovered from the debris of an Air France jet that plunged into the Atlantic nearly a week ago, as investigators probe whether a defective speedometer caused the tragedy.Fifteen more bodies were snatched from the waves 1,150 kilometers (600 miles) off Brazil's northeastern coast on Sunday, when search teams battled "unfavorable" weather conditions to recover other bodies spotted floating among seats and other plane debris, Brazilian military officials said.Now, the number of dead bodies found so far has reached 17."Dozens of structural components" from the Airbus A330 were also picked up, air force spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Henry Munhoz told reporters in Recife, a coastal city in northeastern Brazil.The latest finds followed the recovery on Saturday of the first two bodies from Air France flight AF 447, which came down early June 1 with 228 people on board. The plane left from Rio de Janeiro to Paris a week ago, on May 31.The bodies were to be taken by ship to Brazil's Atlantic archipelago of Fernando de Noronha from where they would be flown to Recife for identification, Munhoz said.On Saturday, the bodies of two men were the first to be recovered by Brazilian navy personnel from the zone located 1,150 kilometers (715 miles) from Recife.The 15 others were taken from the water on Sunday by teams from a Brazilian frigate and a French navy ship involved in the operation.Of those 15 bodies, four were men and four were women. The gender of the others had not yet been determined.Police experts arrived on the island to carry out preliminary identification work and collect basic information, such as the state of the bodies and any clothing, according to air force spokesman Jorge Amaral.Earlier on Sunday Munhoz had said "some 100 objects" had been spotted in the crash zone, including other seats emblazoned with the Air France logo and oxygen masks.The black boxes from the plane have not yet been found. A French navy frigate on Sunday joined the search effort. Two French military aircraft were already flying with the 12 Brazilian air force planes at work in the area.Two French submarines, including one that explored the wreck of the Titanic and another, nuclear powered warship, were also on their way to hunt for the devices, which will stop transmitting their location in three weeks.With clues still being pieced together over the crash, speculation is focusing on its airspeed monitors.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...