Comoros Black Boxes Too Deep For Divers

NAIROBI, KENYA -- Investigators have concluded that the black boxes from a plane that plunged into the Indian Ocean with 153 people onboard are too deep to be reached by divers, a French official said Tuesday.

Yemenia Airways Flight 626 crashed into the Indian Ocean north of the Comoros Islands a week ago. A 12-year-old girl was the sole survivor.

A French submarine picked up signals from the plane's two black boxes on Sunday but no one has yet located the boxes, which contain the plane's flight data and cockpit voice recorders.

The French official, speaking from a crisis unit set up at the French embassy in Comoros after the crash, said two teams of investigators from the French navy and the French aviation agency BEA were trying to determine the exact zone where the black boxes can be found.

The teams are using equipment that allows them to pick up signal beacons but cannot pinpoint the direction or distance of the sound, he said, declining to give his name.

The black boxes are believed to be lying between 1,600 to 4,000 feet (500 to 1,200 meters) under the surface of the ocean, French military spokesman Christophe Prazuck said Monday.

France is sending special robots able to operate on the sea floor to the Comoros, expected to arrive this Sunday.

The BEA investigation agency and the French Defense Ministry did not respond to calls from The Associated Press for comment on the embassy report.

Comoran crisis center spokesman Col. Ismail Mogne-Daho, meanwhile, said only a few parts of the plane and no bodies have been found in the weeklong search.

The absence of bodies or debris contrasts strongly with the Air France crash off the coast of Brazil on June 1. Fifty-one bodies and large pieces of debris were recovered from that crash site in the Atlantic Ocean.