Night Halts Hunt For Kenyan Plane

An air search in Cameroon has so far failed to find a Kenya Airways plane thought to have crashed in the south of the country with 114 people on board.
Darkness has halted the hunt for the aircraft until Sunday morning.

The flight, which originated in Ivory Coast, was reported missing on Saturday after it failed to arrive in Kenya.

Kenya Airways has only confirmed so far that it is missing. It said people from at least 23 different nationalities were on board, including five Britons.

The BBC's Karen Allen in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, says the Boeing 737-800 involved in Saturday's incident was just six months old and was part of a new fleet bought by the airline.

Our correspondent says it will raise questions of whether other aircraft will be taken out of service.

Kenya's national carrier has a good safety record. However, 169 people died when one of its planes crashed in 2000.

'Confusion'

Flight KQ 507 originated in Abidjan, in Ivory Coast, and left Douala, in Cameroon, at 0005 local time (0105 GMT) on Saturday. It was due to arrive in Nairobi at 0615 (0315 GMT).

Kenya Airways said the last communication with the missing plane was received by the control tower in Douala, on Cameroon's coast, shortly after take-off.

 

Cameroon state radio initially said the plane came down near Niete, south along the coast from Douala, although helicopters were later searching for wreckage further inland - near the town of Lolodorf.

"The search location has now been centred around 100kms (62 miles) south-west of [Cameroon's capital] Yaounde," Kenyan Airways chief executive Titus Naikuni told reporters.

He said the extensive search of the heavily-wooded area by low-flying aircraft had found nothing.

A BBC correspondent in Lolodorf said the situation there was chaotic, and that heavy rains had prevented a ground search from taking place.

"They (officials) are not very certain where the crash site is. There's real confusion here," Randy Joe Sa'ah told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme.

Later on Saturday, Cameroon's authorities said the operation had been called off until daybreak.

'Anxious and desperate'

Kenyan Transport Minister Chirau Ali Makwere - who is leading a team of Kenya Airways and government officials to Douala - said it was too early to determine what had happened to the plane.

"We need to get information from the technical experts as to whether it was occasioned by the weather or pilot error or mechanical fault," he was quoted by the Associated Press as saying.  NATIONALITIES OF MISSING
 
35 Cameroon
15 India
9 Kenya (crew)
7 South Africa
6 China
6 Ivory Coast
6 Nigeria
5 Britain
3 Niger
2 Central African Republic
2 Democratic Republic of Congo
2 Equatorial Guinea
1 Ghana; Sweden; Togo; Mali; Switzerland; Comoros; Egypt; Mauritius; Senegal; Congo; Tanzania; US; Burkina Faso
3 unidentified
Source: Kenya Airways

A crisis management centre is now working in Nairobi.

Five Britons were reportedly among the passengers, including Anthony Mitchell, a respected and well-known Associated Press journalist based in Nairobi.

There has been no confirmation from the Foreign Office.

On Saturday, there were distressing scenes at Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta International Airport where a number of worried friends and relatives gathered.

"We can only hope for the best and pray,  We're anxious and desperate," one man said.

The Kenya Airways website says the fleet is 23 strong. It is 26%-owned by Air France-KLM.

In January 2000 a Kenya Airways plane crashed into the sea after taking off from Abidjan airport in Ivory Coast killing 169 people. There were 10 survivors.

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