Cameroon recovers plane crash bodies

By Finbarr O'Reilly

MBANGA PONGO, Cameroon (Reuters) - Rescue workers in Cameroon pulled remains of victims from a fetid swamp on Monday two days after a Kenya Airways plane crashed, killing all 114 people on board.

The Boeing 737-800 fell into densely forested swampland early on Saturday, minutes after leaving Douala for Nairobi in torrential rain. Rescuers said they had found one of two "black box" recorders which may shed light on the cause of the crash.

"It's devastating. I found one or two whole bodies at the start, but since then everything is in pieces," said Captain Francis Ekosso of Cameroon's fire department, who was in charge of the rescue operation.

"People were afraid of the bodies at the start, so I had to pick them up with my own hands, and they came apart in my fingers," he said.

The plane was found late on Sunday in a mangrove swamp near Mbanga Pongo, around 20 km (12 miles) from Douala airport.

In a round crater gouged out of the bush, victims' remains lay amid clothes, personal belongings and plane debris in a hole filled with muddy water smelling of jet fuel and decomposition.

Rescue workers used a mobile generator to pump away water to expose more of the wreckage, and retrieved one of the plane's black box recorders, said Celeste Mandeng, of Cameroon's Civil Protection Service.

He was unable to specify whether it was the flight data recorder or the cockpit voice register which had been recovered.