None of the 114 people aboard a Kenya Airways flight survived its crash into a thick mangrove swamp over the weekend, an official said Monday after returning from the water-filled crater left by the plane.
Asked whether anyone survived, Luc Ndjodo, a local government official in charge of the recovery effort, said: "No."
Ndjodo added he had surveyed the entire site, about the size of a soccer field, and saw no survivors: "I was there. I saw none."
The plane was submerged in murky, orange-brown swamp, with scraps of metal and plastic floating on the surface.
"We assume that a large part of the plane is underwater," Ndjodo said. "I only saw pieces."
Earlier, Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport, said the plane nose-dived into the swamp and disintegrated on impact.
"The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp," Sobakam said.
The plane took off from Douala, Cameroon's commercial capital, and its wreckage was found just 12 miles from the town's outskirts. The cause of the crash remained unclear.
A U.S. Embassy official who saw the crash site from a plane Monday said it would have been impossible to find from the air without coordinates provided by searchers on the ground. He said searchers in planes saw nothing when they flew over before sunset Sunday after hearing reports the plane could have gone down in the swamp.
"It's not what you expect, a bunch of trees knocked down and charred," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. "It's just a big muddy hole, like many others out there."
The United States and France are among the nations providing aircraft and other equipment to help the Cameroonians search. A team from the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board was expected in Cameroon on Tuesday.
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