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Yemenia crash

Comorans pay tribute to victims as plane hunt continues

Article published on the 2009-07-06 Latest update 2009-07-06 16:55 TU

A Comoran flag flies at half-mast in Moroni during a prayer session for passengers in the missing Yemenia A310-300 aircraft and to mark the country's 34th independence anniversary.(Photo: Reuters)

A Comoran flag flies at half-mast in Moroni during a prayer session for passengers in the missing Yemenia A310-300 aircraft and to mark the country's 34th independence anniversary.
(Photo: Reuters)

Thousands gathered on Comoros independence day Monday in the archipelago's capital of Moroni to remember the 152 people who perished in last week's Yemenia airlines disaster. The tribute comes as search crews battle difficult conditions to recover the plane's wreckage.

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Many of the passengers in the downed Airbus craft were Comorans heading home for summer break often marked with family and wedding celebrations.

Only one passenger, a 12-year-old girl, survived the 30 June disaster, in which the Airbus A310 plunged into the ocean last week with 153 people on board as it tried to land at Moroni airport.

President Ahmed Abdallah Sambi, who has declared a month of national mourning, honoured Libounah Maturaffi, a navy officer who rescued Bahia Bakari, the only survivor, from the sea several hours after the accident.

The search for the Yemenia Airbus wreckage will take time as the operation is being conducted under difficult conditions, the French ambassador Luc Hallade said. "We have picked up black box signals. We are trying get the precise location of these recorders."

The Indian Ocean archipelago has no undersea maps, further complicating the search. "We are on a volcano. The undersea relief is extremely uneven with sharp inclinations," Hallade said.

During his speech Monday, President Sambi spoke little of the disaster, instead turning to the row between the three-island union of Comoros and former colonial power France over the French isle of Mayotte.

Mayotte, which is part of a four-island archipelago made up of Grande Comores, Anjouan and Moheli, voted in a 6 July, 1975 referendum and again this year to remain part of France, while the rest opted for independence.

The union government has always maintained that Mayotte belongs to the Comoros and not France.