YAOUNDE, May 5: Cameroonian authorities said late on Saturday that they had called off until daybreak their search for a missing Kenyan airline with 114 people on board feared crashed in dense forest.

Throughout the day helicopters and aircraft from the military searched a vast area of forest in southern Cameroon where it is feared the six-month-old Boeing 737 crashed in the early hours of Saturday in treacherous weather conditions.

From midday onwards the search focused on a region around the town of Lolodorf, 100km southwest of Yaounde, where witnesses said they heard a loud explosion overnight, Cameroon state radio and TV said.

Officials from Kenya Airways said that poor weather was hampering the search. Officials in Nairobi said the plane had taken off from Douala airport in western Cameroon in a violent storm after midnight, headed for Nairobi. In his last radio message to air traffic controllers, the pilot “simply confirmed that the plane had taken off,” a source said.—AFP