AFP/Paris

Flags flew at half-mast in France yesterday in mourning for the 118 victims of the Air Algerie plane tragedy, as investigators waited for the black boxes from the crash to arrive.
Thousands of kilometres away on the remote desert site of the accident in Mali, experts were sifting through the remains of the aircraft to try and determine why it plunged to the ground with such force that it completely disintegrated.
“They will try to glean the maximum information,” Remi Jouty, head of France’s Bureau of Investigations and Analyses agency (BEA), said in Paris.
Their work will take a “few days”, he said, adding that the bureau will examine the plane’s flight recorders and other information, including the prevailing weather conditions at the time.
In a new development to a tough probe into the tragedy, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that the pilots of the Air Algerie passenger plane had asked to turn back.
“What we know for sure is that the weather was bad that night, that the plane crew had asked to change route then to turn back before all contact was lost,” Fabius told reporters in his latest briefing about last week’s disaster.
Reports that the crew asked to amend their route due to bad meteorological conditions emerged almost as soon as the tragedy came to light on Thursday, but the revelation that they subsequently demanded to turn back is a new development.
Speaking hours after the black box flight recorders of the McDonnell Douglas 83 jet arrived in Paris from Mali to help investigators, Fabius said air crash experts currently on the remote desert site of the accident were toiling away in “extremely difficult conditions”.
More than 20 French experts from the country’s Bureau of Investigations and Analyses, which probes air accidents, and specialist police forces were on site in Mali’s barren Gossi area where the plane came down, he said.
Experts from Mali, Algeria and Spain were also helping to determine why the plane – which was operated by Spanish charter firm Swiftair on behalf of Air Algerie – came down with such force that it completely disintegrated.
Investigators from the United States were also due to join them, Fabius added, as McDonnell Douglas belongs to US aviation giant Boeing.
France’s transport minister, meanwhile, warned that analysing the crucial black boxes that record flight data and cockpit conversations could take “weeks”.
Fabius painted a bleak picture of the conditions under which experts were sifting through plane debris and trying to recover remains of the victims in Mali.
“The (human) remains are pulverised, the heat is overwhelming with rain to boot and with extreme difficulties in communicating and in transport,” he said.
“It’s a long, fastidious and extremely complex job,” he added at the foreign ministry in Paris, where the flag flew at half-mast in mourning for the tragedy that saw entire families wiped out.
Video footage of the Gossi area showed a scene of devastation littered with twisted and burnt fragments of the plane.
France bore the brunt of the tragedy, with 54 of its nationals killed in the crash of flight AH5017, which had taken off from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso bound for Algiers.
On Monday, flags on government buildings across the country flew at half-mast in mourning for the victims, who also hailed from Burkina Faso, Lebanon, Algeria, Spain, Canada, Germany and Luxembourg.
Several towns across France that lost entire families or couples to the tragedy also announced they would pay homage to people they held dear.
The central village of Menet, home to a family-of-four who perished in the crash, said a silent march would take place on Friday in front of the places where the victims used to go, such as the school or certain shops.
“People in the village can’t quite realise what happened. For us, the footage we see on television is extremely violent,” said the mayor Alexis Monier.
Paris has taken the lead in the probe, and President Francois Hollande has said the remains of all passengers on the plane – not just French nationals – would be repatriated to France.
The accident is the worst air tragedy to hit France since the crash of the Air France A330 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris in June 2009.
It was also the third crash worldwide in the space of just eight days, capping a disastrous week for the aviation industry.
On July 17, a Malaysia Airlines plane was shot down in restive eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board.
And a Taiwanese aircraft crashed in torrential rain in Taiwan on Wednesday, killing 48.
Apart from air accident experts, France has also dispatched military forces already stationed in Mali since its offensive last year to free the country’s north from the grip of Islamists and Tuareg rebels.
Fabius said that by evening, a total of 200 French forces were due to have arrived on the crash site, as well as Malian soldiers and Dutch forces from the MINUSMA UN stabilisation force in Mali. “The site has been secured,” he said.
Earlier, Mali’s Transport Minister Hachim Koumare said after a visit to the crash site: “We saw the impact of the crash, with debris everywhere. For now, we cannot speak to you of bodies.”
Mali on Sunday said that it had launched a judicial inquiry into the cause of the disaster, adding to similar efforts from Paris and Ouagadougou.
Burkina Faso’s President Blaise Compaore announced the inquiry after meeting with the families of the victims of diverse nationalities.