A French government plane carrying the young girl believed to be the only survivor of an Indian Ocean plane crash arrived at a Paris airport from Comoros yesterday.
Bahia Bakari, 14, was brought back to France on the plane carrying a government minister and other French officials. The Falcon-900 jet with medical facilities aboard arrived at Le Bourget airport just north of Paris shortly after 8am.
An emergency ambulance drove up to the aircraft and she was expected to be taken to a hospital.
PHOTO: REUTERS
At the foot of the aircraft was her father, Kassim, as well as several other members of her family.
Bakari had boarded a plane in Paris with her mother, Aziza, on Monday morning for the long, to Comoros, where they planned to spend part of the summer holidays with relatives. Her three siblings had stayed behind with her father.
Flight IY 626 crashed on Tuesday morning in severe turbulence.
When found hanging on to a piece of the plane, Bakari was suffering from hypothermia, a broken collarbone and bruises.
Bakari told her father she was thrown clear of the Yemenia Airbus A310 when it crashed.
The girl’s father told French news outlets that he had spoken to his daughter on the telephone yesterday: “I asked her what happened and she said, ‘We saw the plane fall in the water. I found myself in the water. I was hearing people speak but I couldn’t see anyone. I was in the dark. I couldn’t see anything. Daddy, I couldn’t swim very well. I grabbed on to something but I don’t know what.’”
Kassim Bakari, who has three other children, said that when he heard about the crash he thought he would never again see his wife and oldest daughter.
He said that his daughter had not yet been told that her mother was dead.
“They told her she was in a room next door, so as not to traumatize her. But it’s not true. I don’t know who is going to tell her,” he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia