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Cotonou - The voice and data recorders from a Boeing 727 that crashed in the west African state of Benin on Christmas Day have been sent to France for examination, police sources said Tuesday. A Boeing 727 operated by Union des Transports Africains (UTA), which is registered in Guinea, crashed into the sea on takeoff from Cotonou, the main city in Benin, killing 139 of the 161 people on board. Most of the passengers were Lebanese expatriates returning home for the holidays. A police source in Cotonou told journalists that the black boxes were sent at the weekend to Paris...

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) -- A speaker who was purportedly Osama bin Laden said on an audiotape that the U.S.-led war in Iraq was the beginning of the "occupation" of Gulf states for their oil and called on Muslims to keep fighting a holy war in the Middle East. The tape is likely authentic, U.S. officials said Monday. The voice on the audiotape, which was broadcast Sunday on the Al-Jazeera satellite channel, referred to recent events - including the Dec. 13 capture of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and peace initiatives between Israel and the Palestinians. The speaker urged Muslims to...

15 UN peacekeepers among dead By DULUE MBACHU Benin plane crash toll rises to 128 Lebanese passenger Nabil Hashim laughs with his brother Ali, Saturday in a hospital in Beirut, Lebanon. Hashim is one of the more than 20 people who survived Thursday's plane crash into the sea near Benin; 161 people were on board. (AP/Mahmoud Tawil) COTONOU, Benin (AP) - Fifteen army officers from Bangladesh returning from UN peacekeeping duty in West Africa were among at least 138 people killed when a jet clipped a building and crashed into the sea shortly after takeoff on Christmas Day, officials said...

<p>COTONOU, Benin - A jetliner clipped a building during takeoff and crashed into the sea off the West African nation of Benin on Thursday, killing at least 82 people, mostly Lebanese on their way home for the holidays, the transport minister said.</p>

At least 90 people were killed when a Boeing 727 crowded with Lebanese families heading for holiday visits in Beirut crashed into the sea after take off from the tiny west African state of Benin, officials said. The aircraft, operated by Lebanese-owned Union Transport Africaines (UTA), carried 156 passengers and seven crew as it tried to take off from Cotonou airport shortly after its scheduled 2:55 pm (1355 GMT) departure time, a government official said.

By NAFI DIOUF and ELLEN KNICKMEYER, Associated Press Writers DAKAR, Senegal - American authorities are investigating whether a Boeing 727 shattered in a deadly Christmas Day crash off West Africa was the same jet that vanished in Angola last year, setting off a worldwide search, a U.S. State Department spokesman said Friday. AP Photo   Also, a Canadian humanitarian-flight pilot told The Associated Press he saw a 727 with the missing Angola jet's tail number at Guinea's airport in June — a month after the jet's disappearance. The plane's old tail number was not fully covered, and the plane was...

The doomed UTA Flight 141 may have been a Boeing 727 that was stolen from Luanda airport in Angola in May, or a U.S.-registered aircraft that had undergone an exterior makeover at Beirut International Airport, where its technical worthiness had been questioned. According to Wednesday's edition of An Nahar, neither of these theories has yet been proven, leaving officials scrambling to distance themselves from Lebanon's worst civil aviation catastrophe, even though it did not occur on its soil. As more intrigues unfolded in the case of the Christmas Day crash of the Beirut-bound flight from Benin, the last batch of...