Sharjah, October 26: Family and friends of the six crewmen on board a cargo flight that crashed in Sharjah last week, gathered yesterday for a funeral service before their bodies were repatriated.
Immediate family members gathered to pray outside the Sharjah Forensic Laboratory at 6pm on Sunday, and the bodies were flown back to Sudan soon after.
Forensic officials were able to condense 10 days of DNA identification work into one day, to enable to bodies to be flown back to Sudan in time.
Dr Hyder Mohammed Ali, the eldest son of Captain Mohammed Ali, arrived here on Friday to provide his DNA sample to the forensics team.
“I couldn’t bear to see his body in the laboratory,” he said. “The picture will remain in my memory for ever.
“I’m proud of my father. He was courageous man.”
Ahmed Al Sirkal and Abdulla Al Amiri of Sharjah police contacted and matched 28 samples from the bodies to immediate relatives in the UAE and Sudan.
Nasser Al Fatih, brother of crewman Mohammed Al Fatih, travelled to the UAE to provide identification for forensics officials. He said that the family will hold a separate funeral in Khartoum.
Imad Moharram, brother of the Assistant Captain, AllaDeen Mohammed, said that the fire had not touched his sibling’s face. “His features were clear to us,” he said.
The repatriation of the bodies was co-ordinated by the Sudanese consulate, officials from which are cooperating in the investigation.
The Sudanese Consul General Issam Mutwali, who helped to arrange the flight back, was also at the funeral service.
Speaking to Khaleej Times on the sidelines of the funeral prayer, Captain Mustafa Al Kordofanny, retired pilot of Sudan Airways and intimate friend and colleague of Captain Mohammed Ali, said that a sudden fault after the take-off is possible to happen, but faults in two of its engine would still allow the pilot to land the aircraft safely.
“No one will know what happened until the investigation is over,” he said.
However, The Director-General of UAE Civil Aviation Authority, Saif Al Swaidi, said Sharjah Airport officials adhere to international standards for checking planes and supervision of safety measures.
“There is no mistake, negligence or violation of safety measures,” he pointed out.
He said a Civil Aviation team will travel to the United Kingdom with the black box for following up the investigation into the cause of the crash.
The plane’s engine would be checked in the United States and Canada, he added.
–Agencies