The removal of victims from the crash of a Kenya Airways passenger jet in Cameroon was stepped up yesterday, with teams removing bodies from the plane's submerged fuselage for the first time.

Alongside the recovery efforts, investigators were focusing initially on the pilot's decision to leave despite predictions a thunderstorm would last up to an hour more, an official familiar with the probe said. The Nairobi, Kenya-bound Kenya Airways Boeing 737-800 nose-dived into a swamp seconds after taking off Saturday from Douala airport, killing all 114 people on board.

"We want to know, why did other planes wait for the storm to pass and not him? That's the question," said the Cameroonian official familiar with the investigation. He would not be named because of the sensitivity of the subject.

The pilot did wait an hour because of a storm. Douala airport's weather report had predicted the storm would last for another hour. The official familiar with the investigation said the pilot of a Royal Air Maroc jetliner that was next to take off waited another 45 minutes after the Kenya Airways flight took off and encountered no turbulence.

According to aviation regulations, cockpit crews are free to take off in bad weather unless the local flight control takes extraordinary measures such as temporarily closing down the airport.

The crash left most of the plane submerged in a swamp near the airport at Douala, a coastal city that is Cameroon's main commercial hub.

Recovery teams have been hampered by mud and water and the poor condition of bodies that were torn apart by the crash's impact and then spent more than 40 hours in the swamp before searchers were able to find the plane. Alain Mebe-Ngo'o, Cameroon's director general of national security, said bodies were being recovered from the plane's fuselage for the first time Thursday. The remains recovered earlier had been from the more than 80 passengers thrown free of the plane.

Officials also were taking DNA samples from relatives gathered in Cameroon to help identify the remains.

Jim Hall, a former chairman of the US National Transportation Safety Board, which sent seven experts to help with the Cameroonian investigation, said it was vital to determine exactly what went wrong because the accident involved the 737-800, the most modern version of Boeing's family of short- to medium-distance jets. Boeing has produced 1,186 of the 737-800s, out of a total of 2,251 of all versions of the 737.

"The 737-800 is the latest version of the world's most popular airliner," Hall said from Washington, D.C. "Any malfunction could have very wide implications."

Editor: Yan