90 feared killed in Benin plane crash
19:30 - 25 December 2003
At least 90 people, mostly Lebanese, were feared killed when a passenger plane bound for Beirut crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff from the West African nation of Benin.
As many as 200 passengers and crew were on United Transit Airlines Flight 141 from Cotonou, Benin's commercial capital, when the plane went down at 2.55pm (1355 GMT), airport security official Jerome Dandjinou said.
Lebanese television quoted Ghabi Koudieh, a Lebanese expatriate in Cotonou and a witness at the crash site, as saying the death toll rose to 90 as more bodies were pulled out of the sea. Among the dead, he said, between 80 and 85 were Lebanese.
Lebanese TV also quoted other witnesses in Cotonou as saying there were about 35 Lebanese survivors.
Dozens of bodies floated among the plane's wreckage about 150 yards off a Cotonou beach and local residents scrambled into the water to search for survivors and recover the dead.
Benin President Mattieu Kerekou also visited the crash site.
Pieces of the plane were lying in the surf: a shorn-off landing gear, the cockpit and the rear part of the fuselage, along with an engine. Tangled wires and metal hung from the ripped-open fuselage.
Airport officials in Beirut said the Boeing 727 had been chartered by two Lebanese men, and most of the passengers were believed to be returning home for the Christmas holidays.
Thousands of Lebanese immigrants live and work in West African countries.
A witness at the crash site said the plane had trouble taking off and hit a building at the end of the runway.