Paris/Ouagadougou, July 25
Poor weather was the most likely cause of the crash of an Air Algerie flight in the West African state of Mali that killed 118 persons on board, French officials said on Friday.

Investigators at the scene of the crash in northern Mali concluded the airliner broke apart when it hit the ground, the officials said, suggesting this meant it was unlikely to have been the victim of an attack.

"French soldiers who are on the ground have started the first investigations. Sadly, there are no survivors," French President Francois Hollande told reporters.

A column of 100 soldiers and 30 vehicles from the French force stationed in the region arrived early on Friday morning to secure the crash site near the northern Mali town of Gossi and to recover bodies, a Defence Ministry official said.

Hollande said one of the black box flight recorders had already been recovered and would be analysed quickly.

"The plane's debris is concentrated in a small area, but it is too early to draw conclusions," Hollande said of the wreckage of the plane carrying at least 51 French nationals that crashed near the border with Burkina Faso, from where it had taken off.

"There are theories, especially the weather, but I'm not excluding any theory."

The death toll was revised to 118 from 116 after a final passenger manifest was issued. "They have to do everything to reassemble the bodies and bring them home so that we can mourn properly," said Alidou Ouedraogo, whose daughter was among the 27 citizens of Burkina Faso killed in the crash.

Highlighting the impact of the crash, television footage issued by Burkinabe officials showed hundreds of small pieces of debris scattered around flat scrub land in pools of muddy water with little visible sign of an intact aircraft.

Burkina Faso Prime Minister Luc Adolphe Tiao told a news conference in Ouagadougou that the plane had been scattered into small fragments: "We're not even sure that we can piece together the bodies they have been so badly destroyed," he said.

Aviation officials lost contact of flight AH5017 at around 0155 GMT on Thursday, less than an hour after taking off for Algeria, following a request by the pilot to change course due to bad weather.

"The aircraft was destroyed at the moment it crashed," French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve told RTL radio.

Another plane crash is likely to add to nerves over flying a week after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine, and after a TransAsia Airways plane crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday.

International airlines also temporarily cancelled flights into Tel Aviv this week, citing security concerns amid the instability in Gaza. — Reuters

Gaza/Jerusalem, July 25
Israel rejected on Friday international proposals for a ceasefire in its fight against Islamist militants in Gaza, but is discussing changes to the truce plan with US Secretary of State John Kerry, a government source said.

Mediators hope that a truce could come into force ahead of a Muslim festival that starts early next week, but they have struggled to resolve seemingly irreconcilable demands from Israel and Hamas-led fighters, locked in conflict since July 8.

Hamas, which wants an end to an Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza before agreeing to halt hostilities, has yet to respond to the ceasefire proposition, which has not been made public.

The Israeli source, who declined to be named, said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security Cabinet had turned down the plan because it did not let Israel carry on hunting down Hamas’s tunnel network that criss-crosses the Gaza border. “Kerry’s proposal leans (too much) towards Hamas’s demands,” said the source.

As diplomacy faltered, fighting raged. Gaza officials said Israeli strikes killed 55 persons on Friday, including the head of media operations for Hamas ally Islamic Jihad and his son. They put the number of Palestinian deaths in 18 days of conflict at 844.

The Gaza turmoil stoked tensions in the nearby occupied West Bank, where US-backed Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas governs in uneasy coordination with Israel. Medics said six Palestinians were killed in separate incidents near the cities of Nablus and Hebron, including one shooting that witnesses blamed on an apparent Jewish settler. — Reuters

A man takes pictures at the wreckage of TransAsia Airways that crashed in Magong in the Penghu islands, on Friday. AFP

Xixi (Taiwan), July 25
The 10 survivors of Taiwan's worst air disaster in more than a decade include a 34-year-old woman who called her father after scrambling from the wreckage and seeking help at a nearby home.

Hung Yu-ting escaped through a hole in the fuselage that opened up after the plane plowed into homes Wednesday while attempting to land on the outlying resort island of Penghu, killing 48 people.

"She called me on the phone to say the plane had crashed and exploded but that she had already crawled out and I should come right away to get her," said Hung's father, Hung Chang-ming, who lives just a few hundred meters from the crash site.

Hung rushed to the scene, but his daughter had already been taken away by rescuers. "When I was halfway there the fire was still really big, but it was smaller when I arrived on the scene," Hung told reporters. "There were two other injured outside and the first ambulance had already taken away three, including my daughter."

Hung Chang-ming joined rescuers and other residents in putting out the fire and rescuing other survivors before going to the hospital to check on his daughter.

Hung Yu-ting was recovering today from burns to her arms, legs and back suffered during her escape. The condition of the other survivors wasn't immediately known.

Other relatives weren't so lucky, some recalling the last phone conversations with their loved ones.

Shu Chi-tse said he had spoken to his son, Shu Chong-tai, just before the flight left the southern city of Kaohsiung on Taiwan's main island for a short ride west across the Taiwan Strait.

"He is a good boy. He cares for me and his mom. He loves his grandma a lot," Shu said.

Among the dead were all four members of the flight crew, a family of six and a family of four. They included several children, like 9-year-old Ho Po-yu, who was returning home to Penghu with his mother after attending a summer camp for young choral singers.

Stormy weather and low visibility are thought to have been factors in the crash of the twin propeller ATR-72 operated by TransAsia Airways.

One of the questions is why did the pilots decide to proceed with the flight despite rough weather on the heels of a typhoon that had forced the cancellation of about 200 flights earlier in the day. However, aviation authorities said conditions were safe for flying and two other planes had landed at Penghu that day prior to the crash.

The mother of one of the victims screamed at TransAsia Chairman Vincent Lin when he arrived to pay respects at the funeral hall today. — AP