Mr Hollande said one flight data recorder had been recovered, after French troops reached the crash site near Mali's border with Burkina Faso.

 

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the plane early on Thursday after pilots reported severe storms.

 

Almost half of the 116 people on board were French, including a family of 10. 

 

The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 had been chartered from Spanish airline, Swiftair. It was flying from Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, to Algiers.

 

Tomasz Schafernaker: "Thunderstorms stretching up to 15km into the air can cause turbulence², icing on the wings and lightning"

 

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

 

"We think the aircraft crashed for reasons linked to the weather conditions, although no theory can be excluded at this point," he said.

 

A team of 100 French soldiers, with 30 vehicles, had travelled to the crash site on Friday, a French defence ministry³ official said.

 

The team was part of a force that was deployed⁴ to Mali last year to combat an insurgency⁵（叛乱，暴动） backed by al-Qaeda.

 

"French soldiers who are on the ground have started the first investigations," Mr Hollande said on Friday. "Sadly there are no survivors."

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