More bodies, plane wreckage found off Tanzania

MAFIA, Tanzania (Reuters) - French marines and divers found aircraft parts and five more decomposing bodies off Tanzania's coast Thursday, hundreds of miles from where a Yemeni jet crashed into the Indian Ocean, officials said.

A doomed Yemeni Airbus 310-300 plunged into the ocean in bad weather off the Comoros archipelago last week where only one survivor -- a 14-year-old Franco-Comoran girl -- out of 153 people on board was found. The hunt for other survivors was abandoned this week.

"Up to now, we have 13 bodies that we have retrieved from the ocean. We expect to retrieve a total of 16 bodies by the end of the day," said Peter Kivuyo, assistant commissioner of Tanzania police. Eight bodies were recovered earlier this week.

A Reuters witness saw French personnel unload several body bags from a helicopter on Mafia island, lying off the east Africa nation, about 500 km (300 miles) from the crash site.

Yemen's transport ministry said that another three bodies had been found off the coast of Comoros, but Comoran authorities said that they had recovered no more bodies.

Comoran rescue teams believe most of the dead remain trapped inside the submerged wreck.

Officials say the cause of the crash remains unknown. A French submarine has detected a signal from the plane's flight recorders, but rescuers say it could take a while to reach the wreck as it is in deep water.

Kivuyo said that Tanzanian authorities handed over the aircraft debris to experts to determine whether they were from the Yemeni plane. It was unclear which parts had been found.

Airbus jets are manufactured in four European countries. The A310s, which are no longer in production, were assembled in Toulouse, France. German-made parts included the vertical tail, the forward and rear fuselage and the speed brakes. (Additional reporting by Mohamed Sudam in Sana'a)

(Reporting by George Obulutsa; Writing by Richard Lough; editing by Jack Kimball)