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Gulf-Air crash is a deja vu for Egyptians |
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August 25, 2000
MANAMA (AP) - Sobbing family members, their eyes bloodshot from a night of waiting, collapsed in anguish Thursday as names of their loved ones were listed as victims of the Gulf Air crash that killed all 143 aboard. Grieving relatives attended a meeting where the names of the victims were read aloud by a Gulf Air official, his voice choking on the words. "This is the worst day of my life. I lost a part of me," cried Khalifa al-Hashil, 45, of Saudi Arabia, whose 35-year-old brother, Mohammed, was on the flight that crashed into the Persian Gulf on Wednesday night. Searchers retrieved the cockpit voice recorder Thursday from the shallow Gulf waters, said Ali Ahmadi, a Gulf Air vice president. The flight data recorder had been found earlier from the Airbus A320. Thirty-six of the 143 people on board GF072, an evening flight from 53 international destinations. The plane, delivered to Gulf Air in September 1994, had accumulated about 17,177 flight hours in 13,848 flights, the Airbus statement said. Gulf Air's most recent disaster came in 1983, when a 737-200 crashed during approach to Abu Dhabi after a bomb exploded in the baggage compartment. The crash killed all six crew members and 105 of 111 passengers.
The crash of a Gulf Air flight that killed 143 people Wednesday night in Bahrain, is a disturbing deja vu for Egyptians: It is the second plane crash within a year to devastate this Arab country. Sixty-three Egyptians were on board the Gulf Air Airbus A320, which crashed into shallow Gulf waters Wednesday night after circling and trying to land in Bahrain. On Oct. 31, 1999, a plane carrying 217 mostly Egyptian passengers crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Massachusetts. The cause of that crash still has not been determined, providing no closure to the victims' families, whose grief was reopened earlier this month with the release of a factual report by the National Transportation Safety Board. Walid Mourad, head of the Egyptian Pilots Association and a voice often heard in relation to the EgyptAir investigation, said Wednesday's crash is a tragedy for the Arab people as a whole. "We are all family and brothers. We all have something in this," Mourad said. "But for the Egyptians, this is a double blow. Two disasters in a row for the Egyptians." Transportation Minister Ibrahim el-Dimeiri came to the Cairo airport Thursday to express his condolences to families of the victims, who later headed to Bahrain to identify the bodies. In all, 155 relatives and seven doctors, clergymen and officials took the special Gulf Air flight to Manama, the Bahraini capital and site of Wednesday's crash. Ahmed al-Mahreky, a 20-year-old Bahraini, said his father was on plane that crashed Wednesday. "We're going home now, but to whom, to whom," he cried. "Oh dear dad." Mustafa Tag El-Din, the prime minister's aide for crisis affairs, said Egyptian officials issued passports to those family members who didn't have them. "All necessary measures have been taken to receive the families of the victims," Mohammed al-Sayed Abbas, the Egyptian ambassador to Bahrain, told Egyptian television. "The embassy staff will be with them step by step until they identify the deceased." In the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, two evening concerts were postponed out of respect for the victims, one at the order of first lady Suzanne Mubarak. In Bahrain, relatives were beginning the wrenching process of identifying the victims from photographs taken after the bodies were retrieved from the Gulf. Egypt, which lacks the oil wealth of the Gulf and has an economy struggling to revive from decades of socialist stagnation, has a long tradition of sending workers to the Gulf to fill everything from skilled to menial jobs. Remittances from citizens working abroad make up Egypt's biggest source of foreign exchange. |
