Sole Survivor

A 14-year-old girl is the only survivor of yesterday's Yemeni plane crash, rescued from the Indian Ocean after clinging to floating wreckage for hours:

Yesterday's reports of a five-year-old survivor appear to have been incorrect: It seems that they were referring to Bahia Bakari, a Marseilles resident who was traveling with her mother to visit relatives in Comoros. ... According to Bakari's father, she was thrown from the plane during the crash, and heard the voices of other passengers calling out in the night. But those voices eventually stopped.

The Telegraph reports that Bakari was "suffering from extreme tiredness and hypothermia, had cuts to her face and a fractured collar-bone" and "was so exhausted that, at first, she was unable to get into [emergency services'] rescue boat" after her perilous night at sea.

Waves crashed over her constantly and, as well as corpses, and she was surrounded by floating clothes, suitcases, and passports and photographs of her fellow passengers, now believed to be dead.

She had climbed on to a portion of wreckage "believed to be part of the plane's cabin" but kept slipping back into the sea while clinging on to part of it with her hands.

The horrific circumstances would have led many to have given up long before being rescued, especially with powerful currents constantly pulling downwards.

But somehow the teenager kept going, trying to put the injuries she had suffered in the impact of the crash out of her head as her energy sapped away.

By the time a boat's torch picked her out in the depths, she could hardly move.

"We tried to throw her a life buoy to hang on to, but she wouldn't take the buoy," said one of the rescuers.

"I had to jump in to rescue her. She was trembling, trembling. We put four sheets around her, and gave her hot water and sugar."

Blub.