Investigators are probing the crash of an American Airlines Airbus that plummeted into a New York neighborhood minutes after take-off on Monday, killing all 260 people on board and raising fears of a new terrorist attack, said reports.
New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said there were no survivors among the passengers and crew, reported the BBC Online, adding that a further six people who were residents of the Rockaway Beach area crash site had been reported missing.
By late Monday, searchers had recovered 225 bodies, officials said, according to CNN. The flight contained 260 people, reported the network, including five unticketed infants sitting on their parents' laps.
The plane was en route to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, and reports said that most of the passengers were from that country.
Despite the short period of time separating the crash from the airborne suicide attacks on Sept. 11, authorities have so far carefully refrained from linking the latest disaster to terrorism.
A senior FBI official quoted by CNN said there had been no intelligence gathered and no threats made, "nothing to indicate this was an act of terrorism."
"All information we have currently is that this is an accident," said Marion Blakey, chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board, cited by AP.
Earlier, White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said there had been no unusual communications with the cockpit, but added "We have not ruled anything in; we have not ruled anything out."
Nevertheless, a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AP that intelligence agencies, the FBI and the Federal Aviation Administration were reviewing recent intelligence for signs that terrorism was involved.
If there was an explosion on the plane - and many witnesses heard one - it was probably caused by a catastrophic mechanical failure, investigators told AP.
The cockpit voice recorder from the aircraft has been recovered and was flown to Washington for analysis, the National Transportation and Safety Board said, cited by CNN.
However, the network said investigators were still searching for the flight data recorder that would give information about how the different systems, including the engines, were performing when the plane went down.
The current probe is focusing on the possibility that a mechanical failure, perhaps centered on a hub in one engine, caused the crash, said reports.
EYEWITNESSES TO TRAGEDY
Just after the plane took off, witnesses said they saw what appeared to be an explosion, according to CNN. Parts of the plane began breaking off and wreckage was found in at least four locations.
"I was in my kitchen ...and I saw the plane hit the house behind my house," an eyewitness told CNN. "It was so low, I was ducking almost. Then (there were) huge fireballs, and I jumped out of the ... window of my house...It was like a bomb exploded."
"Houses are destroyed. There are pieces of plane all over the place. There's series of lines of body bags and they're just carrying the bodies out," Fire Department Chaplain Father John Delendick told Reuters. "I just stood there and prayed."
NATION ON GUARD AGAIN
All three major airports in New York - Kennedy, Newark International Airport and La Guardia - shut down for several hours after the crash, according to Reuters, as the impact of the latest crash raised security concerns.
By early afternoon, La Guardia and Newark had reopened, while Kennedy allowed only arrivals all afternoon and added departures at 6:30pm, added the agency.
The United Nations went into a partial lockdown after the crash, according to CNN, and New York tunnels were closed for a time. In addition, the Empire State building was evacuated.
As part of the increased post-Sept. 11 security regime, the Pentagon ordered additional combat air patrols over the United States and its coastlines after Flight 587 crashed, reported CNN.
The new tragedy also appeared to put investors on guard, with Reuters reporting that stocks and the dollar fell on news of the crash but recovered as the probe pointed to an accident.
The Dow Jones industrial average ended unofficially off 55 points, about 0.60 percent, at 9,553, while AMR closed down $1.64, or 9 percent, at $16.49 on the New York Stock Exchange, added the agency - Albawaba.com
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