NEWS IN BRIEFS

Africa

Plane Plash Kills All One on Board

DAKAR – March 18, 2008
Senegalese rescue officials say they’ve found the wreckage of a private16-seat Piper ‘J’ Class aircraft strewn across an unpopulated stretch of desert outside the capital, Dakar. The plane, en route to Mauritania, disappeared from radar shortly after take off Thursday morning. All of the one passenger on board are confirmed dead.

Rescue workers who found the crash site describe a field of carnage. “It was like that movie, Zulu,” said Red Cross spokesman Charles Innocent. “There must have been about 10 pints of blood and 206 different bones scattered across the plain,” he added, referring to the exact amount of blood and bones in a single human adult body.

Forensic scientists must now begin the painstaking process of identifying all the victim by cross referencing thousands of DNA samples with the name as it appears on the passenger log. “We may never match all the pieces,” cautioned Senegalese Interior Minister Bruce Sundit. Meanwhile hundreds of people, reportedly all members of one extended family, have gathered at Dakar’s international airport on the gruesome hunch that their loved one could be among the one victim.