Family members of those killed on the Air Algerie plane that crashed in Mali were taken to the wreckage to grieve on Saturday as French President Francois Hollande announced three days of national mourning.
Hollande ordered that flags on government buildings across France fly at half-mast for three days from today after the death of 118 people in the crash, of which 54 were French nationals.
ARRANGEMENTS
Photo: AFP
Hollande, who met with relatives of victims for three hours on Saturday afternoon, said that all the bodies would be flown to France and that he would make sure that families can, at some point, travel to the crash site to help them cope with their grief.
“A headstone will be erected so that no one ever forgets that on this land, on this site, 118 people perished,” Hollande said in a televised address, his third on the air disaster in three days.
Families of victims from Burkina Faso, from where the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 aircraft took off early on Thursday morning, were flown out by helicopter to pay respects at the scrubby bushland site.
However, in a blow to the bereaved, the mayor of the northern Malian town of Gossi said the remains would be difficult to recover.
“No, bodies cannot be recovered because they are shredded and burned. Everything has burned, even the forest in a radius of 200m,” Gossi Mayor Moussa Ag Almouner said.
“It is heart-breaking and difficult for any person to bear. You are left with no appetite. It’s better not to go and see,” he added, after a visit to the site.
As well as French and Burkinabe, those aboard included Lebanese, Algerians, Spanish, Canadians, Germans, Luxembourgers, a Cameroonian, a Belgian, an Egyptian, a Ukrainian, a Swiss, a Nigerian and a Malian.
ATTACK UNLIKELY
Initial evidence taken from the remote crash site indicates that the aircraft broke apart when it smashed to the ground early on Thursday morning, making an attack appear unlikely.
Hollande confirmed that early signs pointed to poor weather as the most likely cause of the crash, but added he did not rule out any other explanation at this stage. Two separate investigations are ongoing, he said.
UN peacekeeping force MINUSMA said on Saturday that a team of its experts had located the second “black box” from the flight.
French, Malian and Dutch soldiers from MINUSMA secured the crash site, about 80km south of Gossi, near the Burkina Faso border.
A resident in the north Malian town of Gao said he saw about 20 researchers from French aviation safety body BEA preparing to visit the site on Saturday.
Aviation authorities lost contact with the plane at about 1:55am on Thursday, shortly after the pilot asked to change course due to a storm.
Another plane crash is likely to add to nervousness about flying a week after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine and after a TransAsia Airways plane crashed in Penghu during a typhoon on Wednesday.
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