French President Francois Hollande delivers a speech regarding the situation of the crashed Air Algeria flight following an extraordinary cabinet meeting in Paris, France, July 25, 2014. French President Francois Hollande said Friday there were no survivors of the crashed Air Algerie jetliner, and one of the aircraft's two black boxes has been found in the wreckage. (Xinhua/Jose Rodriguez)
PARIS, July 25 (Xinhua) -- French President Francois Hollande said Friday there were no survivors of the crashed Air Algerie jetliner, and one of the aircraft's two black boxes has been found in the wreckage.
"Sadly, there were no survivors" of the flight AH5017 that went down in northern Mali, with 116 people aboard, including 51 French nationals, Hollande said in televised remarks.
A black box of the aircraft, retrieved by a French military unit, is being taken to the Malian city of Gao, he said, adding that it had already been recovered and would be analyzed quickly.
According to the French president, the debris of the aircraft concentrated in a small area, "but it is too early to draw conclusions."
"The are theories, especially the weather, but I'm not excluding any theory," Hollande said.
Earlier, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve also said that although the tragedy was likely due to bad weather, terrorism cannot be ruled out as a cause for the crash.
"We think the plane went down due to weather conditions, but no hypothesis can be excluded as long as we don't have the results of an investigation," he told media.
The AH5017 flight disappeared from the radar screen 50 minutes after it took off from Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso, en route to Algiers on Thursday. Earlier in the day, Algerian Foreign Minister Ramtane Lamamra confirmed that the ill-fated passenger plane had crashed in neighboring Mali.
Mali, where the crashed Air Algerie flight is found, has been grappling with sporadic rebel attacks in its northern area since an armed rebellion started by a military coup was crushed in 2013 by French and African troops.
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