Johannesburg - Fishermen have pulled 18 bodies from the Indian Ocean off Tanzania more than a week after 152 people died in a Yemen Airways plane crash, a police spokesman said Friday. The spokesman told the South African radio station SAFM that a weather radar instrument was among the wreckage of the Airbus A310 found near the island of Mafia, located about 180 kilometres south of Zanzibar and 600 kilometres from the suspected crash site off the Comoros islands.
Yemenia Flight IY626 plunged into the ocean June 30 in stormy weather while on the last Sana'a-Moroni leg of its flight from Paris after failing in its first attempt at landing at Moroni in windy weather. Most of its passengers were Comorans living in France.
Authorities were searching for the flight and voice data recorders from the flight to shed light on what caused the crash.
Of the 153 people onboard, only a 12-year-old French girl of Comoran origin survived. She was found clinging to wreckage several hours later.
