· Only 31 burnt bodies found
· Victims burnt beyond recognition
· Crash debris to be collected this week
· Pohamba in touch with Guebuza
The Namibian Cabinet is expecting a thorough briefing on what to do with the bodies of 31 foreigners who died in an airplane crash on Friday – amid fears that the victims’ families will not be able to identify the bodies.
One of the possibilities being mooted is to bury all victims - 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, one Portuguese-Brazilian, a French national and one Chinese - in a mass grave at a site yet to be decided by the victims’ countries of origin.
Cabinet Secretary Frans Kapofi told Namibian Sun yesterday that a briefing is expected at tomorrow’s Cabinet meeting.
The Namibian foreign affairs ministry has been tasked to deal with correspondence from the victims’ countries of origin, until a decision is taken on what to do with the bodies.
Although it is believed that 33 people were on board when the Mozambican plane left Maputo, the Namibian police said they had found only 31 bodies by yesterday.
Namibian Sun, along with sister newspapers Republikein and Allgemeine Zeitung, boarded a chartered plane from Windhoek to Kavango on Saturday afternoon to acquaint themselves with the situation on the ground.
Our news team was welcomed by a disturbing scene of dismembered remains and a strong stench from the decomposing body parts that were scattered around the scene.
The remains were transported by 4x4 vehicles to the Bagani airstrip and were sealed in body bags before they could be airlifted to the Rundu Hospital mortuary on Saturday.
With the military plane not having enough space to transport all the remains, the charred bodies had to be driven under police escort about 200 kilometres to Rundu.
The body bags were kept there overnight before being airlifted into Windhoek yesterday morning.
The remains will now be kept at State and private hospital mortuaries in Windhoek until the Namibian and Mozambican governments decide on repatriating them for burial.
Yesterday, prior to his departure from Kavango East, Safety and Security Minister Immanuel Ngatjizeko said he had briefed President Hifikepunye Pohamba, who in turn updated his Mozambican counterpart, Armando Emílio Guebuza, on the preliminary investigations and ground observations of the crash.
Ngatjizeko said his report, expected in Cabinet tomorrow, would be a descriptive observation of the crash site, which he had assessed on Saturday afternoon while the works and transport ministry’s aviation officials, police and defence force members were locating and collecting the scattered, burnt bodies.
Ngatjizeko, who was accompanied by the Namibian Police’s Deputy Inspector-General, Major-General James Tjivikua, said the voice and flight data recorders and two small items of luggage were the only items retrieved from the scene in the Bwabwata National Park.
“I am to formally report to the President, as I have only verbally reported to him on Saturday night because he was to get in touch with his Mozambique counterpart.
“I have to tell him of the disintegration of such a big ‘animal’ like a plane and what I observed at the site,” Ngatjizeko said.
Ngatjizeko speculated that the plane might have overturned before erupting in flames, while at the same time it also glided and uprooted trees before coming to a standstill.
“This might explain the huge bang heard by the small village community in neighbouring Botswana, who had also seen it flying dangerously low.
“Its impact was so hard that the force resulted in many passengers being pushed towards the front of the plane, because it is also where most of the bodies were found, while a few limbs were scattered around,” Ngatjizeko said.
Speaking to our reporters at the cordoned-off scene, which was still smouldering, Tjivikua said the plane left skid marks 500 metres long, scattered with uprooted trees and thousands of pieces of debris.
A woman’s sandal and single sneaker, a cooler box without a cover, a compact disk, a red shirt and electric cables hanging from a nearby tree branch were among the items that were not incinerated by the fire.
“This crash was very bad and horrific. As one can see, the body parts of the plane are strewn all over, making it difficult to even identify a cockpit from the plane’s tail and wings,” Tjivikua said.
BAGANI, KAVANGO EAST FAITH SANKWASA
