AFP, Nairobi: A Kenya Airways airliner that crashed Saturday after taking off from Douala airport in Cameroon on a flight to Nairobi, was carrying 82 Africans, 21 Asians, seven Europeans, one US citizen and three others, the company said Saturday.
Kenya Airways said a total of 114 people were on board the Boeing 737-800 travelling from Abidjan to Nairobi, via Douala, including 105 passengers and nine crew.
The nationalities are: 35 Cameroonians, 15 Indians, nine Kenyan crew members, seven South Africans, six Chinese, six Ivorians, six Nigerians, five Britons, three Nigerians, two from the Central African Republic, two from the Democratic Republic of Congo, one US citizen, one Swiss, one Swede, one Malian, one Togolese, one Ghanaian, one from the Comoros, one from Mauritius, one Senegalese, one Congolese from Congo-Brazzaville, one Egyptian, one Tanzanian, one from Burkina Faso and two from Equatorial Guinea.
The chief executive officer for Kenya Airways, Titus Naikuni, told a news conference that three of six others who had not previously been identified included one Cameroonian, and two from Equatorial Guinea, and that they were still working to identify the nationalities of the other three.
Air traffic controllers picked up a distress signal from the missing airliner just after it took off from Douala airport in Cameroon, a source close to the Agency for the Safety of Aerial Navigation in Africa told AFP.
Two Cameroonian army helicopters began searching a wide area south of the line between Douala and the capital Yaounde, 250 kilometres (180 miles) to the east, to try to locate the aircraft.
Air France-KLM owns 26 percent stake in Kenya Airways, which prides itself on its reputation as a reliable African air company.
© The Bangladesh Journal
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