Death Toll Of Beirut-bound Plane Hits111

Twenty-two of the ill-fated plane passenger survived, Hamed Akobi said, giving a revised casualty toll from Thursday’s disaster in which a Lebanese-owned Union Transport Africaines (UTA) plane carrying156 passengers and seven crew crashed on take-off, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Search teams pursued a hunt for bodies in the morning.

Rescuers said overnight that it was unlikely that more survivors would be found in the wreckage.

The minister gave the revised toll to a high-level Lebanese official delegation headed by Foreign Minister Michel Obeid, who arrived in Cotonou in the morning.

The Lebanese delegation went to see some of the survivors in the hospital center.

A hospital source said that four survivors had died of their wounds during the night, but Akobi confirmed to AFP that 22 survivors were still alive on Friday morning, without giving further details.

One of the tasks of the Lebanese delegation will be to repatriate the bodies of the victims.

Technical problems delayed the UTA flight, which originated in the Guinean capital Conakry and stopped in the Sierra Leone capital Freetown before picking up 71 passengers in Cotonou, aviation officials said requesting anonymity.

As it began its delayed departure, its landing gear failed to re-engage, sending the plane skidding down the runway and smashing into a building, witnesses said.

A senior aviation official suggested the aircraft may also have been overloaded or unbalanced.

It then exploded and tumbled nose down into the sea, witnesses said.

A sizeable Lebanese population has put down roots in west Africa, traditionally involved in commerce and trade.

UTA has run a weekly flight – with multiple stops – between Beirut and Cotonou for nearly two months.

UTA had been denied a license to register in Lebanon because it did not fulfill "technical requirements", Lebanese Transport Minister Najib Mikati was quoted as saying by Lebanese state media.

The carrier instead registered in the west African state of Guinea, six small countries west of Benin along the Atlantic coast.

Fishermen and families celebrating the Christmas holiday on the beach leapt into the water to rescue the first survivors.

Rescuers, who had difficulty driving emergency vehicles across the sandy beach, continued their efforts late into the night.

"We are trying to get to the rest but it is just so tough," said one firefighter, who had removed his shirt so as not to be weighed down in the waters.

Cash-poor African airlines typically have dismal safety records due to the high cost of maintaining aircraft.

Thursday’s crash brought the death toll from major plane crashes in Africa to more than 500 for2003 , including an accident November 29 in the Democratic Republic of Congo that left 33 dead when a military passenger plane plowed into a busy market.

Lebanese civil aviation chief Hamdi Shawq said the flight had been expected to arrive in Beirut early Friday morning and was due to continue on from there to its final destination, Dubai.