WASHINGTON — A Gulf Air jet on a flight from Cairo slammed into the Persian Gulf on Wednesday night about four miles short of Bahrain International Airport, killing all 143 people aboard.
U.S. Navy helicopters and ships based in Bahrain joined rescue efforts, and emergency workers reported early today that they had recovered all of the bodies, including those of 36 children and the crew of eight.
Ibrahim Abdullah Hammar, Bahrain's undersecretary for civil aviation, told a news conference at the airport in Manama, the capital, that the flight data recorder, which provides crucial information about the plane's performance, had been recovered. The search continued for the cockpit voice recorder, Hammar said.
A Gulf Air official in Cairo told news agencies that the passengers included 63 Egyptians, 34 Bahrainis, 12 Saudis and people from at least 10 other nations.
A list released by the Cairo airport passport control said that at least 36 passengers were younger than 18, the Associated Press reported.
They appeared to be traveling with different families, not in a single group.
In Washington, a State Department official told the Reuters news service that an American citizen working as a diplomatic courier was among the passengers.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, joined the search in the shallow waters.
He said two SH-60 Seahawk helicopters from the George Washington aircraft carrier battle group, which was making a port call in Bahrain, and one shore-based H-3 Sea King helicopter participated in the nighttime searches.
The destroyers Oldendorf and Milius--both of which are part of the George Washington battle group and are assigned to San Diego as home port--joined the search, along with the Catawba, an oceangoing tug that has a crane with a 10-ton capacity that is used to recover downed aircraft, Whitman said.
Bahraini television said one of the two engines on the European-made Airbus A-320 caught fire before the crash. But an air traffic controller at the Bahrain airport told the Associated Press that he saw no fire before the plane plunged into the gulf and erupted into flames.
The controller said the plane circled the runway twice in an attempt to land. On the third attempt, it plunged into the water and exploded. He said the aircraft's crew did not report anything out of the ordinary before the crash.
