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Rescuers continue grim search for Flight 507 bodies

Recovery teams tried and failed to pump water away from an airliner that crashed in a central African swamp, then pressed ahead with their grim job of finding bodies in the wreckage.

Rain complicated the operation in the swamp just 5km from the end of the runway where the aircraft took off early Saturday on a flight from Douala to Nairobi, Kenya.

The crash of Kenya Airways Flight 507 killed all 114 aboard.

Kenya Airways chief Pilot James Ouma told a Nairobi news conference on Tuesday that the Kenyan crash investigators at the site now believe Flight 507 crashed about 30 seconds after takeoff.

Officials in Cameroon had said earlier that they lost contact with the aircraft 11 to 13 minutes into flight. The investigation has just begun, and the discrepancy could not immediately be explained.

The airliner's flight data recorder was found late Monday in good condition, increasing chances investigators would be able to determine how and why the plane plunged nose down into the swamp.

The flight's cockpit voice recorder was still missing.

It took nearly two days to find the wreckage, most of it submerged in murky orange-brown water and concealed by a thick canopy of trees. For reasons that have yet to be explained, the plane stopped emitting signals after an initial distress call, slowing the search.
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