Rescuers recall saving sole plane-crash survivor

MORONI, Comoros — Doe Cyrille and his crew searched for hours in crashing winds and waves up to 16 feet high for any sign of Yemenia Flight 626. Then they spotted a girl impossibly clinging to a piece of debris.

Cyrille, a merchant marine from Madagascar, had been heading with a team of rescuers toward a distress signal after the plane crashed Tuesday in the Indian Ocean off the coast of this former French colony.

Bahia Bakari, 12, was the only survivor of the crash. The other 152 people on board — including Bahia's mother — are presumed dead.

In a handwritten report, obtained Saturday by The Associated Press, Cyrille writes that the crew saw a girl "trying to get onto a piece of wood or plastic." A member of the rescue team threw a life preserver to the girl, but the waters were too rough for her to catch it.

One of the sailors, Libouna Maturaffe Soulemane — who had completed a rescue course six months earlier — jumped into the sea with a flotation device and reached out to Bahia.

"When I saw the girl, I was not afraid to dive in," Soulemane told The Associated Press. "She was calm. ... She knew what she was doing," said Soulemane. "The girl is very courageous."

The crew aboard Sima Com 2 threw the life buoy again toward Soulemane and the girl and pulled them to the boat.

Cyrille's report said Bahia survived at sea for more than nine hours, while French officials have estimated she did that even longer, 13 hours.

Once on board, Maj. Said Ali Madi, a gendarme at the port of Moroni who was on board Sima Com 2, asked Bahia to remove her clothes so they could give her something dry to wear, says Soulemane.

But the shy girl refused.

Madi then began cutting away bits of her clothing as crew members wrapped her with two beige bed covers and a curtain.

Cyrille sailed the Sima Com 2 back to Port Moroni where they arrived at 7:25 p.m. and handed over Bahia to medical authorities.

Apart from hypothermia, she suffered a fractured collarbone and bruises to her face, elbow and foot.

Bahia returned to France aboard a French government plane on Thursday and is hospitalized in Paris.

The Sima Com 2 is a privately owned ship that normally transports passengers between Comoros and the neighboring island of Madagascar. When the Yemenia flight disappeared, the Comoros government demanded all ships at Moroni port search for the plane since the government does not have any ships of its own.

Ships and military planes continue to search for survivors, bodies and wreckage from Yemenia Flight 626.