WORLD : Leland’s Body Recovered in Ethiopia
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Authorities today recovered the bodies of all 16 people killed in the crash of a plane carrying a U.S. congressional delegation headed by Rep. Mickey Leland (D-Tex.).
A helicopter hovered near the face of a sheer cliff in southwestern Ethiopia as the bodies were hoisted up one by one from the rugged mountainside where the twin-engine plane crashed last week.
They were flown to the nearby town of Gambela and placed aboard an Ethiopian air force C-130 cargo plane for the return to Addis Ababa.
The effort to retrieve the bodies of Leland, who headed the House Select Committee on Hunger, and his companions had been stalled by low clouds, rain and fog that shrouded the mountain, which is called Tam.
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