Cameroonian search teams have found the wreckage of a plane believed to have been carrying an Irish citizen, authorities said today.
‘For the moment between nine and 10 corpses have been retrieved,’ Cameroon Information Minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told a news conference in the capital Yaounde.
James Cassely, who was born in Ballymena, Co Antrim, but grew up in Quin, Co Clare, was travelling on his British passport on a chartered plane between Cameroon and the Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday when aviation officials lost contact with the aircraft.
The plane was carrying mining executives and staff, including the Australian billionaire Ken Talbot, one of the country's richest men, whose company is developing an iron ore mine in the area.
Mr Cassely, who is believed to be in his early 30s, is based in London.
Fog and thick jungle hampered the search for the plane, Cameroonian and Congolese officials said earlier.
Both countries sent up aircraft to try to spot the plane, which disappeared during a flight from Yaounde to northwest Congo Republic on Saturday with 11 people on board.
It took two days for searchers to find a Kenya Airways Boeing 737 that crashed in Cameroon in 2007.
Aviation officials lost contact with the plane on Saturday about an hour after it took off from Yaounde en route to Yangadou in the northwest of Congo Republic.
