COTONOU, Dec 26: Lebanese army divers scoured the sea floor on Friday near the airport in the west African state of Benin after a Christmas Day plane crash that killed 113 people, most of them Lebanese expatriates heading home for the holidays.

The five divers, who arrived aboard a Middle Eastern Airlines flight alongside Lebanese Foreign Minister Jean Obeid, joined rescue efforts begun on Thursday afternoon after a Boeing 727 operated by Union des Transports Africains (UTA) failed to take off properly and crashed into the sea.

A senior aviation official said on Friday that the black box data and voice recorders had been found.

Of the 156 passengers and seven crew, just 22 people were confirmed to have survived, said Benin’s Transport Minister Hamed Akobi.

The divers’ search in the Gulf of Guinea is likely to be a recovery mission as hopes were dim that more survivors would be found amid the tangled wreckage.

Emergency workers armed with ropes tussled with a piece of fuselage that remained lodged in the sandy sea bottom, as debris floated around them.

Technical problems had delayed the UTA flight, which originated in the Guinean capital Conakry and stopped in Freetown, Sierra Leone, before picking up passengers in Cotonou, aviation officials said.

The plane, which aviation officials suggest was overloaded or unbalanced, ran out of runway as it began its delayed departure. It went skidding into a building before tumbling nose down into the sea, witnesses said. Transport minister Akobi sought to curtail speculation before the opening of an investigation.

“Right now it is difficult to tell what the real causes of this accident were,” he said. “Only the results of the investigation will make that clear.” The Lebanese-owned carrier has run a weekly flight — with multiple stops — between Beirut and Cotonou for nearly two months, hoping to capitalize on the large Lebanese population that has put down roots in western Africa.

Antoine Chaghoury, the brother of Lebanon’s honorary consul to Benin, said “99 percent” of those on board were Lebanese. It was not immediately known how many survivors were Lebanese. The plane’s captain, a Libyan national, was among the living.

The Lebanese foreign minister visited survivors in hospital ahead of their planned repatriation to Lebanon.

LICENCE REFUSED: The carrier had been refused a licence to register in Lebanon because it did not fulfil “technical requirements”, Lebanese Transport Minister Najib Mikati was quoted as saying by Lebanese state media.—AFP