Air Algérie crash: flags in France to fly at half-mast

François Hollande makes order after death of 118 people, including 54 French nationals, when plane crashed in Mali

Reuters in Dakar-Sunday 27 July 2014 

François Hollande has ordered that flags on government buildings across France fly at half-mast for three days from Monday after 118 people, including 54 French nationals, were killed when an Air Algérie flight crashed in Mali.

Hollande, who met with relatives of victims for three hours on Saturday afternoon, said that all the bodies would be flown to France and that he would make sure that families could, at some point, travel to the crash site to help them cope with grief.

"A headstone will be erected so that no one ever forgets that on this land, on this site, 118 people perished," Hollande said in a television address, his third on the air disaster in three days.

He confirmed that early indications were that poor weather was the most likely cause of the crash, but added he was not ruling out any other explanation. Two separate investigations were ongoing, he said.

The United Nations said on Saturday that its experts had located the second black box from flight AH5017, which crashed in Mali earlier this week.

French, Malian and Dutch soldiers from a UN peacekeeping force (Minusma) secured the crash site, about 50 miles south of the northern Malian town of Gossi, near the Burkina Faso border.

Initial evidence taken from the remote crash site indicated that the aircraft broke apart when it smashed to the ground early on Thursday morning, making an attack appear unlikely.

Malian authorities said they were opening an international inquiry into AH5017, which crashed less than an hour after it left the Burkinabé capital of Ouagadougou en route for Algiers. Aviation authorities lost contact with the plane at around 0155 GMT on Thursday, shortly after the pilot asked to change course due to a storm.