A severely bruised young girl believed to be the only survivor of an Indian Ocean plane crash has flown back to Paris, where she was embraced gently by her father.
Bahia Bakari, 12, returned to France from the Comoros Islands on a French government plane. The Falcon-900 jet with medical facilities left the archipelago nation, a former French colony, and arrived on Thursday at Le Bourget airport just north of Paris.
Yemenia Flight 626 crashed on Tuesday morning off Comoros. Bahia, described by her father as a fragile girl who could barely swim, spent more than 13 hours in the water clinging to a piece of wreckage. She had a fractured collarbone and widespread bruises.
PHOTO: AP
The other 152 people on the plane, including her mother and others from France’s large Comoran community, are presumed dead.
Television station France 2 carried a brief interview with Bahia on the plane coming home on Thursday. She appeared dazed and gave mostly one-word answers. Asked how she felt, the teenager, who could barely open one of her black-and-blue eyes, replied faintly “Well.”
When asked if she is worried, she said: “A little bit, a little bit.”
Bahia’s father, Kassim, met her as she arrived, saying he was relieved and overjoyed to see his daughter even as he mourned his wife.
“It was very powerful,” he said of his reunion with Bahia.
He said he asked her, “‘How are you? Was the return trip OK?’ ... We joked a little, the two of us.”
“I took her in my arms and I embraced her, but not too strongly because her collarbone is injured,” he said later on France-24 television.
An official said Bahia was told “that her mother is missing. She is facing up to this event in a very brave way.”
“She says instructions were given to passengers and that then she felt something like electricity ... as if she had been a bit electrocuted,” he said. “And suddenly there was this big sound. She found herself in the water.”
DISASTER: The Bangladesh Meteorological Department recorded a magnitude 5.7 and tremors reached as far as Kolkata, India, more than 300km away from the epicenter A powerful earthquake struck Bangladesh yesterday outside the crowded capital, Dhaka, killing at least five people and injuring about a hundred, the government said. The magnitude 5.5 quake struck at 10:38am near Narsingdi, Bangladesh, about 33km from Dhaka, the US Geological Survey (USGS) said. The earthquake sparked fear and chaos with many in the Muslim-majority nation of 170 million people at home on their day off. AFP reporters in Dhaka said they saw people weeping in the streets while others appeared shocked. Bangladesh Interim Leader Muhammad Yunus expressed his “deep shock and sorrow over the news of casualties in various districts.” At least five people,
ON THE LAM: The Brazilian Supreme Court said that the former president tried to burn his ankle monitor off as part of an attempt to orchestrate his escape from Brazil Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro — under house arrest while he appeals a conviction for a foiled coup attempt — was taken into custody on Saturday after the Brazilian Supreme Court deemed him a high flight risk. The court said the far-right firebrand — who was sentenced to 27 years in prison over a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 elections — had attempted to disable his ankle monitor to flee. Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes said Bolsonaro’s detention was a preventive measure as final appeals play out. In a video made
It is one of the world’s most famous unsolved codes whose answer could sell for a fortune — but two US friends say they have already found the secret hidden by Kryptos. The S-shaped copper sculpture has baffled cryptography enthusiasts since its 1990 installation on the grounds of the CIA headquarters in Virginia, with three of its four messages deciphered so far. Yet K4, the final passage, has kept codebreakers scratching their heads. Sculptor Jim Sanborn, 80, has been so overwhelmed by guesses that he started charging US$50 for each response. Sanborn in August announced he would auction the 97-character solution to K4
SHOW OF FORCE: The US has held nine multilateral drills near Guam in the past four months, which Australia said was important to deter coercion in the region Five Chinese research vessels, including ships used for space and missile tracking and underwater mapping, were active in the northwest Pacific last month, as the US stepped up military exercises, data compiled by a Guam-based group shows. Rapid militarization in the northern Pacific gets insufficient attention, the Pacific Center for Island Security said, adding that it makes island populations a potential target in any great-power conflict. “If you look at the number of US and bilateral and multilateral exercises, there is a lot of activity,” Leland Bettis, the director of the group that seeks to flag regional security risks, said in an
RSS