The French president Francois Hollande has today confirmed that there were no survivors of the Flight AH5017 crash.
Debris from the plane was spotted south of the Gao area in Mali, West Africa, late Thursday evening. The plane had vanished from radar screens some hours earlier, after the pilot requested a course change to avoid adverse weather conditions. Contact was lost shortly thereafter.
French troops are now at the crash site. The aircraft’s black box has reportedly been recovered.
Preliminary investigations suggest that bad weather conditions may have contributed to the crash, but the actual cause of the tragedy will not be known until the content of the black box is analyzed.