Air Algerie AH5017: 'No survivors' from crash in Mali

There are no survivors from the Air Algerie AH5017 passenger jet that
crashed in Mali, says the French President, Francois Hollande.

Mr Hollande said one flight data recorder had been recovered, after
French troops reached the crash site near Mali's border with Burkina
Faso.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane early on Thursday
after pilots reported severe storms.

Almost half of the 116 people on board were French, including a family of 10.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 had been chartered from Spanish airline,
Swiftair. It was flying from Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, to
Algiers.

French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told French radio network
RTL that "the aircraft was destroyed at the moment it crashed".

"We think the aircraft crashed for reasons linked to the weather
conditions, although no theory can be excluded at this point," he
said.

A team of 100 French soldiers, with 30 vehicles, had travelled to the
crash site on Friday, a French defence ministry official said.

The team was part of a force that was deployed to Mali last year to
combat an insurgency backed by al-Qaeda.

"French soldiers who are on the ground have started the first
investigations," Mr Hollande said on Friday. "Sadly there are no
survivors."

Sandstorm alert
Contact with flight AH 5017 was lost about 50 minutes after take-off
from Ouagadougou early on Thursday morning, Air Algerie said.

The pilot had contacted Niger's control tower in Niamey at around
01:30 GMT to change course because of a sandstorm, officials say.

Burkina Faso authorities said the passenger list comprised 27 people
from Burkina Faso, 51 French, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, two from
Luxembourg, five Canadians, four Germans, one Cameroonian, one
Belgian, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Swiss, one Nigerian and one
Malian.

On Friday, the UK Foreign Office said a British man was also among
the dead. He has yet to be identified.

The six crew members were Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.

The family of 10 who died were from the east of France. They included
Michel Reynaud and his ex-wife, their two sons and two daughters, and
four grandchildren.

A friend of the family told French newspaper Le Bien Public that they
had been on "the trip of a lifetime" in Burkina Faso. "It is a
tragedy," she said.

A team of 100 French soldiers travelled to the region on Friday to
secure the crash site
The aircraft had taken off from Ougadougou airport, and lost contact
with the ground soon afterwards.

-BBC