MORONI, Comoros, July 1, 2009
"Miracle" Crash Survivor Taken to Paris
14-Year-Old Girl Rescued from Yemeni Jet Crash Clung to Debris for More Than 13 Hours
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Surrounded by doctors the only survivor of the Yemenia Airbus 310 jet crash 14-year-old Bahia Bakari, is partial seen on her bed, through the window of her hospital room as she is cared for at the El Maaruf Hospital in Moroni, Comoros, July, 1, 2009. (AP Photo/Sayyid Azim)
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Play CBS Video Video Yemeni Plane Crash From 163 passengers, one child survives a flight from Yemen to Madagascar that crashed in the Indian Ocean, reports Elizabeth Palmer.
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Photo Essay Yemeni Jet Crashes An Airbus A310 carrying 153 people went down in the Indian Ocean while traveling from Yemen to Comoros
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Fast Facts Comoros Learn about the people, economy and history.
The Yemenia Airbus 310 jet was carrying 153 people when it went down in howling winds early Tuesday in the sea north of the Comoros Islands.
French officials late Wednesday retracted claims that one of the plane's black boxes had been found. French Commander Bertrand Mortemard de Boisse told The Associated Press that a signal detected from the debris of Yemenia Flight IY626 was from a distress beacon and not from one of the plane's black boxes.
The flight data and cockpit voice recorders in those black boxes are crucial to help investigators determine the cause of the crash off this former French colony.
An Associated Press reporter saw 14-year-old Bahia Bakari in a Comoros hospital Wednesday as she was visited by government officials. She was conscious with bruises on her face and gauze bandages on her right elbow and right foot. Her hair was pulled back and she was covered by a blue blanket but she gamely shook the hand of Alain Joyandet, France's minister for international cooperation.
Her uncle, Joseph Yousouf, said Bahia also had a fracture on her collarbone.
"It is a true miracle. She is a courageous young girl," Joyandet said, adding that Bahia held onto a piece of the plane from 1:30 a.m Tuesday to 3:00 p.m., then signaled a passing boat, which rescued her.
"She really showed an absolutely incredible physical and moral strength," he said. "She is physically out of danger, she is evidently very traumatized."
The girl was traveling with her mother, who is feared dead. They had left Paris on Monday night to see family in the Comoros.
"She's asking for her mother," Yousouf told the AP. For fear of upsetting Bahia, Yousouf told her that her mother is in the room next door.
Joyandet said the girl left Wednesday night on a chartered executive jet and would be put in a Paris hospital upon arrival.
The passengers on the downed plane were flying the last leg of a journey from Paris and Marseille to Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes. Most of the passengers were from Comoros, sixty-six were French citizens.
The girl's father told French radio that his oldest daughter could "barely swim" but managed to hang on. Kassim Bakari, who spoke with his oldest daughter by phone, said Bahia was ejected and found herself beside the plane.
"She couldn't feel anything, and found herself in the water. She heard people speaking around her but she couldn't see anyone in the darkness," Bakari said on France's RTL radio. "She's a very timid girl, I never thought she would escape like that."
Sgt. Said Abdilai told Europe 1 radio that Bahia was too weak to grasp the life ring rescuers threw to her, so he jumped into the sea to get her. He said rescuers gave the trembling girl warm water with sugar.
(CBS)
Said Mohammed, a nurse at El Mararouf hospital in the Comoros capital of Moroni, said the girl was doing well.
The crash a few miles (kilometers) off this island nation came two years after aviation officials reported equipment faults with the plane, an aging Airbus 310 flying the last leg of a Yemenia airlines flight from Paris and Marseille to the Comoros, with a stop in Yemen to change planes.
A top French official said the Airbus 310 crashed in deep water nine miles (14.4 kilometers) north of the Comoran coast and 21 miles (34 kilometers) from the Moroni airport.
The French air accident investigation agency BEA was sending a team of safety investigators and Airbus experts to Comoros, an archipelago of three main islands 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) south of Yemen, between Africa's southeastern coast and the island of Madagascar.
A respected pilots group, the London-based International Federation of Air Line Pilots Association, said the plane may have been attempting a go-around in rough weather for another approach when it hit the sea.
The 2,900-meter (9,558-feet) long runway at Prince Said Ibrahim International Airport on Moroni island is adequate for modern airliners. But the airport is considered a difficult one for pilots due to prevailing weather conditions and hills to the east of the runway. Some airlines provide special training to pilots who need to fly in there.
Pilots coming in from the north also must land their planes visually and don't have any all-weather instrument landing system to help them.
"The field in question is thought of as being challenging, and certain operators consider it a daytime-only airport," said Gideon Ewers of the London-based pilots' association.
The Yemenia plane was trying to land in the dark, about 1:30 in the morning, amid bad weather.
French and American teams carried out rescue operations Wednesday, fighting heavy seas. Abdul-Khaleq al-Qadi, chairman of Yemenia's board, said the black boxes, once retrieved, will be taken to France for analysis.
Rescue boats plied the waters north of the main island and scores of people gathered on nearby beaches to watch.
"The search is continuing," Joyandet said. "No other survivors have been found."
A French military cargo plane flew over a zone 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Grand Comoros Island, while two inflatable dinghies sent by French forces on La Reunion island combed waters closer to the coast.
"The sea is pretty rough at the present time, the wind is blowing hard and the drift is strong ... there are any survivors, the bodies of the victims and the debris are drifting rapidly towards the north," said Christophe Prazuck, spokesman for the French military.
Col. Dominique Fontaine, who is managing the rescue operations, said that no other plane debris has been found so far.
A tug arrived from the French island of Mayotte to recover survivors, corpses and debris, and a French frigate and another military ship headed to the scene.
The tragedy prompted an outcry in Comoros, where residents have long complained of a lack of seat belts on Yemenia flights and planes so overcrowded that passengers had to stand in the aisles.
French aviation inspectors found a "number of faults" in the plane's equipment during a 2007 inspection, French Transport Minister Dominique Bussereau said. European Union Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani said the airline had previously met EU safety checks but would now face a full investigation.
Al-Qadi said Yemenia airlines has decided to give the victims' families euro20,000 ($28,300) for each victim, describing it as "a preliminary decision." The company also will pay for one person from each family to fly to Moroni to witness the search and rescue operation.
Disputing the French claim, he said maintenance was carried out regularly according to high standards.
"The crash has nothing to do with maintenance," he told reporters in San'a, adding that the aircraft received maintenance just two months before under the supervision of an Airbus technical team.
"The company has been working for 42 years ... what happened was out of (anyone's) control," al-Qadi said.
Airbus said the plane went into service 19 years ago, in 1990, and had accumulated 51,900 flight hours. It has been operated by Yemenia since 1999.
© MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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- Religion offers Man the bribe of Heaven and the threat of Hell IF he behaves the way religion wants him to behave. The nobility of Man is that Man can behave morally because it is the right thing to do, and behave morally without any praise or without the guarantee of a reward. The ability to behave in a moral fashion under a condition of uncertainty is what distinguishes Man from Beast, and under religion Man's morality is like a dog begging for a bone. So much for Free Will. Disgraceful.
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- The concept that 152 people went screaming to their deaths so that someday a million years from now God can defeat Satan (when God could defeat Satan right now if He felt like it, but he doesn't feel like it right now) is one of the most simply evil statements of human victimhood ever recorded. Placing responsiblility for evil in the world in the hands of Satan, placing Satan in the hands of God, not blaming God but blaming humanity, of which those 152 screaming people are a part, this is just vile.
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- by YerSoWrong July 1, 2009 2:42 PM PDT
Yeppers 'cept nobody said that.
Satan killed 152 people, not God.
Sorry if God's ways just aren't up to your standards.
Maybe you'd like to take God's place on the throne.
Seems like an angel named Lucifer felt the same way...
Humans had our chance to reject Satan in the Garden of Eden.
God has been waiting ever since then for us to change our ways.
We're the one holding things up.
You see, we have free will. The choice is ours.
Don't expect God to make our choices for us.
Sorry if having free will is just to inconveeeeenient for you.
- Placing responsiblility for evil in the world in the hands of Satan, placing Satan in the hands of God, not blaming God but blaming humanity
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Now I see your error.
Satan is to blame for the evil in the world.
But God has already defeated Satan through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, when He was resurrected and ascended to the heavens.
Now Satan is in the hands of humanity, because if we believe that Satan has been defeated, then he is defeated.
But so many like you refuse to accept and believe. So you perpetuate Satan by keeping evil in your heart.
Satan lives on only in the hearts of humanity. So Satan is already in our hands.
All we have to do is reject him. What are we waiting for?
These people died because of the evil in the hearts of the greedy companies that built the plane and that force the pilot to fly in dangerous weather.
That's how Satan works. He plants greed in humans, and humans die from greed.
If there was no greed, there would have been no crash.
It's so clear and plain. But you are too blind to see.
What a pity. How many more must die before you only believe.
- You have dressed yourself in a straight-jacket and called yourself Houdini. Doesn't work like that, although you're suitably attired.
- by YerSoWrong July 1, 2009 2:42 PM PDT
- Yah these comments are taking a REALLY long time to appear after you post them.
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- Yes, the responses are taking a long time because I HAVE A LIFE thank you very much. I checked into turbulence-related crashes by Boeing and McDonnell Douglas and there are many, too many to list here. Fed-Ex had some accidents you might want to look up. And I am not changing the subject when I ask you about American cars. My point is this. If you inject "American-made" as a reason why something is superior, you are opening a can of worms. If you truly believe Boeing is superior to Airbus, then state it so as a company - not a country. I can name numerous products like cars, watches, etc that have more superior reputations than our American-made products.
- by notsoconfused July 1, 2009 3:46 PM PDT
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Wow you really are confused.
It was talking about MY OWN posts take a long time to appear after I post them. Longer than usual today.
Sorry if your list is so long. How many Boeing, McDonnel Douglas, or Lockheed jetliners have suffered major structural failure (big parts falling off in flight) due to encounters with turbulence? That should shorten your list considerably.
Oh, so sorry if my choice of words is upsetting to you. Perhaps if you lie down for a while you might feel better.
Or maybe Mommy needs to burp you.
- How many American made planes have crashed from turbulence????
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- Romans 16:20
The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
Sounds like God is taking care of business.
Maybe just not fast enough to satisfy you. - Reply to this comment
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- You poor misguided, ignorant soul. Unfortunately many American-made planes have crashed from turbulence. Look it up, admit you are wrong (I'm guessing that is an impossibility) and then apologize to everyone you have offended.
- I'm still waiting for you to remind ME when was the last time an American made jetliner crashed from turbulence.
The closest thing I can remember was the microburst crashes from years and years ago. But they didn't involve the plane breaking up in the air at altitude, the way Airbus planes do.
Looks like I'll be waiting a long time for any real answer from you.
Maybe an eternity.
- God created Satan with perfect foreknowledge of what He was doing. God created a killing-machine and let it loose among us. Can a Principal disavow the works of his Agent?
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- God created Satan with perfect foreknowledge of what He was doing.
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Show me the Scripture that supports this statement.
God gave Lucifer free will. It was Lucifer's choice to rebel, not God's.
God also gave free will to humans. Look how we use it.
- Can a Principal disavow the works of his Agent?
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That's why the Principal created us, His other Agents, to crush Satan under our feet. See the epistle to the Romans.
- If God didn't foresee what Satan would do, then He isn't God. If God did foresee what Satan would do, and created him anyway, then He isn't God.
- by YerSoWrong July 1, 2009 2:37 PM PDT
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That whole free will thing - SWISH! it just musses up your hair on the way over...
- God created Satan with perfect foreknowledge of what He was doing.
- It's in the Bible, in Jeremiah chapter 31, starting at verse 31.
It foretells the coming of Jesus and the New Covenant.
It defines God. Whatever created the heavens and the Earth and all good things, we name that God.
And whatever causes all destruction and evil, we name that Satan. - Reply to this comment
- Poor confused souls you are. God selects thise He chooses to call home. Did it ever occur to you non-believers that God brought those people together at that moment becuase it was in his plans to bring them from this life into the after-life? Your limited feeble human minds cannot believe that which you cannot see, cannot touch. We call it faith! I don't know what entity you worship but I know what God can do. After I fininsh this post I am going to pray for you non-believers becuase you need it based on your pointless statements! I feel great knowing my God is alive and merciful but at the same kind he can get irritated by blasphemous men and can and will punish you. Have you thought that maybe the adversity that causes you to speak against God was brought on you by God? Pray to him and watch your life change oh insignificant ones.
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- God loved these people enough to shoot them through a jet engine.
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I think I've covered this enough times.
You're just being a pest at this point.
- A pest like the Iranians who didn't want to vote for a theocracy? When your answer to every question in the crossword puzzle is "Jesus", it's not the fault of the guy looking over your shoulder and wondering about you.
- A pest like the Iranians who didn't want to vote for a theocracy?
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Does Obama still want to meet with the government of Iran "without preconditions?"
- Obama should accept the surrender of the Iranian government without preconditions. It is the altruistic sacrifice of the innocent that keeps him from dealing with them the way they deserve, and it is the altruistic sacrifice of the innocent that religion and socialism share.
- It is the altruistic sacrifice of the innocent that keeps him from dealing with them the way they deserve
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So now you blame the innocent for the deaths of protesters?
Perhaps you'd like to clarify that comment.
- God loved these people enough to shoot them through a jet engine.
- Turbulence was believed to be a factor in the crash, Yemen's embassy in Washington said.
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That's the Airbus company's new motto: if you die, don't blame the plane. It was turbulence.
Turbulence was to blame.
Or, you could stick to flying American made planes, which don't fall apart in turbulence. - Reply to this comment
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- I have faith that tomorrow I will win the lottery...doesn't mean it's going to happen. Faith is your only argument and frankly, a very poor one. You believe what you want and I will go on being content not knowing what the answers are...which is o.k. Be careful how you judge others.
- I have faith that tomorrow I will win the lottery
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Good luck on that one.
I have faith that I've flown through plenty of turbulence on Boeings and McDonnel Douglases, but they didn't fall apart in midair and crash.
I have faith that American made planes are built better than an Airbus.
Why does that disturb you so much?
- My lottery comment wasn't serious, it was made to make a point. Knock, knock, is anybody home???
How do you know the plane fell apart midair? Did you know you can hit pockets of air turbulence that can plummet a plane to crash regardless if it is American-made or not? Seriously, you are very uneducated and making a fool of yourself.
- How do you know the plane fell apart midair? Did you know you can hit pockets of air turbulence that can plummet a plane to crash regardless if it is American-made or not?
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Then how come so many Airbus planes have crashed lately under similar circumstances?
And my "good luck" comment was a J-O-K-E also. Haven't you heard of sarcasm?
- I don't think you meant it as a joke. You seem a little slow on the uptake.
If your theory of American-made planes are better, what is your theory on American-made cars?
- If your theory of American-made planes are better, what is your theory on American-made cars?
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Don't change the subject. Just answer the question.
When was the last time an American made jetliner crashed because of turbulence?
But Airbus?
Including the one where the entire vertical tail fell off over NYC, there were three just in the past few years.
And then there's the shocking history of Airbus crashes from other causes, including the computer that took control of the plane and crashed it in Japan, in spite of the pilot applying full opposite control all the way to impact.
Tell me the last time any American made plane did that.
- Very happy story.Bahia you are one lucky and a very strong little girl.I can only imagine what you went though.All the best to you.
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- Darthcheney345, please tell me you are joking. You can't be serious. Obviously, you are very ignorant and uneducated. Look up turbulence and how it can crash a plane. Get yourself educated before you say something so offensive and wrong.
- And the other 152 people must not have prayed hard enough?
But what an incredible story! Interestingly, they've been complaining about a lack of seatbelts on the planes, but it seems that if she was "ejected" from the plane, then her life was probably saved by not having a seat belt on. I'm sure seatbelts are safer most of the time, but for this one girl, it might have been a factor. - Reply to this comment
- God in His unfathomable wisdom saw-fit to down an airplane with 153 people on board just to show us that prayers are not answered but the human will to survive can sometimes carry us through.
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- Prove that GOD did it!!!
He is not the only spiritual being with powers, you know.. The Devil could have and would have done it if it suited him. Remember what he And again, they both could have left it to natural causes or mans stupidity. What??? you don't believe that Man can screw up on his own!!!! Ssssshhheeeeessssshhhhh!!!!!!
- Part of my comment didn't get posted, (sorry)
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Prove that GOD did it!!!
He is not the only spiritual being with powers, you know.. The Devil could have and would have done it if it suited him. Remember what he did to Job. And again, they both could have left it to natural causes or mans stupidity. What??? you don't believe that Man can screw up on his own!!!! Ssssshhheeeeessssshhhhh!!!!!!
- by ToolMangler1 July 1, 2009 10:56 AM PDT
Prove that GOD did it!!!
He is not the only spiritual being with powers, you know.. The Devil could have and would have done it
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Tool Man, that's why you can tell.
If it was good, God did it.
If it was bad, Satan did it.
It's that simple.
- God created the Devil to prove that God is unreliable.
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Read the book of Isaiah.
Satan started as the most trusted angel of God.
God gave the angel Lucifer authority over all the earth and all things on it.
Then the angel rebelled against God and vowed to take God's place.
Half the angels took God's side, and half took Satan's side.
Ever since then, Satan has used his authority to cause destruction and evil, hoping that we would blame it on God.
God will not take back his promise to give authority over the earth.
He created us to defeat Satan.
We're still working on it. Some harder than others...
- If God didn't know what He was doing when He created Satan, then He isn't God. If God knew what He was doing when He created Satan, then He isn't God.
- by YerSoWrong July 1, 2009 2:34 PM PDT
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I can see free will is just too confusing for you.
- Prove that GOD did it!!!
- What an incredible story of survival. Praise God for His mercy on that little one. I am sure she prayed during that time as well.
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- IF THERE IS A GOD, IT CAUSED THIS ACCIDENT,
SOME GOD, BIG DEAL, A DUMB PILOT COULD HAVE DONE IT ALL
BY HIMSELF, WOULD THAT STILL BE A MIRACLE?
- IF THERE IS A GOD, IT CAUSED THIS ACCIDENT
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All good things were done by God.
All bad things were done by Satan.
It's that simple.
- >>>All good things were done by God.
All bad things were done by Satan.
It's that simple.<<<
Christianity:
The belief that a two-thousand-year-old jewish zombie can enable you to live forever if
you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him that you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat an apple off a magical tree in a wonderland.
- Christianity:
The believe that God as already defeated Satan through his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, when He was resurrected and ascended to the heavens.
All that remains is for humans to accept and believe.
But so many stubborn ones refuse to believe. They perpetuate Satan by keeping evil in their hearts. Even though Satan is defeated, they continue to do the work of Satan.
It was the greed in the companies that built this plane and that force the pilot to fly in dangerous weather. Greed killed these people.
If everyone would accept and believe, then there would be no more greed, and they wouldn't have died.
God spared this one girl. Humans could have spared them all if they would abandon their evil ways of greed.
God is waiting only for us to believe.
How many more must die before we believe?
- IF THERE IS A GOD, IT CAUSED THIS ACCIDENT,
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