YAOUNDE, May 22 (Reuters) A hunter in Cameroon has discovered the wreckage of a South African six-seater aircraft and two charred bodies on a mountainside three months after it disappeared, government officials said today.
The twin-engined Piper PA-34 went missing on February 24 after losing contact with air traffic control during a flight from Togo to Cameroon's city of Douala, the transport ministry said. Two South Africans were believed to have been on board.
''A hunter went up the mountain and discovered the wreckage with the two occupants of the six-seater plane burnt to ashes,'' the governor of Cameroon's South-West province, Louis Zanga Eyeya, told state radio.
The hunter told a local traditional ruler about the discovery on the side of Mount Cameroon, who then informed the regional authorities. A military helicopter was expected to take soldiers and rescue workers to retrieve the two bodies.
Cameroonian authorities have been criticised for the amount of time it took to find a Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800, which crashed in jungle on May 5 some five km from the end of the runway at Douala airport, killing 114 people.
Rescuers took 48 hours to find the crash site.
Cameroonian officials have said their initial search efforts were thrown off course by satellite tracking data from Europe which seemed to put the plane's last position over remote forest some 150 km away.
REUTERS SS BD1711
The twin-engined Piper PA-34 went missing on February 24 after losing contact with air traffic control during a flight from Togo to Cameroon's city of Douala, the transport ministry said. Two South Africans were believed to have been on board.
''A hunter went up the mountain and discovered the wreckage with the two occupants of the six-seater plane burnt to ashes,'' the governor of Cameroon's South-West province, Louis Zanga Eyeya, told state radio.
The hunter told a local traditional ruler about the discovery on the side of Mount Cameroon, who then informed the regional authorities. A military helicopter was expected to take soldiers and rescue workers to retrieve the two bodies.
Cameroonian authorities have been criticised for the amount of time it took to find a Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800, which crashed in jungle on May 5 some five km from the end of the runway at Douala airport, killing 114 people.
Rescuers took 48 hours to find the crash site.
Cameroonian officials have said their initial search efforts were thrown off course by satellite tracking data from Europe which seemed to put the plane's last position over remote forest some 150 km away.
REUTERS SS BD1711
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