Wreckage of Air Algerie plane found in Mali

PARIS, July 25 (agencies): Authorities said Thursday they located the wreckage of an Air Algerie flight after it crashed in northern Mali carrying 116 passengers and crew, nearly half of them French, en route from Burkina Faso to Algeria.

Regional aviation officials said they had lost contact with flight AH5017 at around 0155 GMT Thursday, less than an hour after takeoff, following a request by the pilot to change course due to bad weather.

Two French Mirage fighter jets and United Nations helicopters Thursday had for hours hunted for the wreck of the McDonnell Douglas MD-83 plane in remote northern Mali, a region prey to scattered Islamist militants and Tuareg separatist fighters.

Malian state television said the wreckage of the flight was discovered between the town of Gossi and the Burkina Faso border. It said President Ibrahima Boubacar Keita would visit the site of the crash on Friday.

General Gilbert Diendere, a member of the crisis unit in Burkina Faso, said his team of investigators had already inspected the wreckage near the village of Boulikessi, 50 km (31 miles) from the frontier.

"This team has confirmed that it has seen the remains of the plane, totally burned out and scattered on the ground," Diendere told local television, adding the remains of dead bodies had also been discovered.

Communications Minister Alain Edouard Traore said the accident was the worst in Burkina Faso's aviation history. President Blaise Compaore declared two days of national mourning, starting on Friday.

Meanwhile: No one survived the crash of an Air Algerie flight over Mali, French President Francois Hollande said Thursday, adding that the plane's black box flight recorder had been found.

"Sadly, there were no survivors" of flight AH5017 that had 116 people on board, including 51 French nationals, when it went down over northern Mali, Hollande said in televised comments. French military has recovered the flight recorder and was taking it to the city of Gao, he added.

 France's transport minister said Friday it was extremely unlikely, and even "out of the question", that any of the 116 people on board an Air Algerie plane that crashed in Mali had survived.

"Given the state of the plane (wreck), it is very unlikely, even out of the question, that there are any survivors," Frederic Cuvillier said on French television, adding that French military forces were heading to the site where the jet, which was carrying 51 French nationals, crashed.