JOHANNESBURG, South Africa -- Search vessels combing the Indian Ocean found five bodies Sunday from the South African Airways jumbo jet that crashed Saturday with 160 people aboard near the island of Mauritius.
The air and sea search operations, about 155 miles northeast of the island, reported no signs of survivors and airline officials ruled out the possibility of finding any.
'The people aboard the plane should be presumed dead,' airlines spokesman Nivo Ventor said. The search was called off at nightfall but was to resume Monday.
An official at Plaisance Airport in the Mauritian capital of Port Louis said in a telephone interview that ships found five unidentified bodies Sunday among the debris scattered over 150 square miles.
South African and Mauritian officials ruled out sabotage, but declined to speculate on wny the Boeing 747 Combi crashed in the second worst commercial airline disaster of 1987.
Reports from the search area indicated SAA Flight 295 from Taipei, Taiwan, to Johannesburg, with a refueling stop on Mauritius, crashed or exploded in the air.
About 10 minutes before the crash the pilot, Capt. Dawie Uys, 49, reported smoke in the cockpit and began an emergency descent.
The airport official said ships, including the French Navy's La Grandiere, recovered the bodies of a man and a woman at 5:30 a.m. and within six hours found bodies believed to be a man and woman up to 60 miles apart.
'The fifth body is too badly mutilated for rescuers to tell whether it was a man or a woman. The other bodies had serious wounds and were also very badly mutilated,' he said.
Among the 141 passengers were 52 South Africans, 47 Japanese, 30 Taiwanese, four Europeans, two Australians, one Korean, two Hong Kong residents and two Mauritians. The 19 crew members were South Africans.
South African Airways representative Viv Lewis told reporters in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius, the small size of the debris recovered was 'because of the impact. The plane hit the water very hard.'
Lewis said the search for survivors would continue, but acknowledged, 'It is getting pretty desperate now.'
He said the 'black box' flight and voice recorders, equipped with a radio beacon and located in the tail of the aircraft, had probably sunk in the 2-mile deep waters because no signal was picked up from the devices, which could provide clues into the accident's cause.
'Plans to locate it are foremost in our minds,' Lewis said.
A reporter who flew over the search area said it was littered with orange life preservers and other small objects. The largest item appeared to be a door, he said.
Mauritian flight controller Servan Sing said Uys reported smoke in the cockpit about 10 minutes before a scheduled 4:13 a.m. landing. He began an emergency descent from 35,000 feet to 14,000 feet and acknowledged landing instructions, which was the last word from the plane.
Tinus Jacobs, manager of the airline's Taipei office, denied a local report the plane developed mechanical trouble before it took off from Taipei.
The crash was the worst in the 52-year history of the South African Airways and the second worst commercial airline accident this year.
The worst ocurred May 9 when 183 people, including 11 crew and 22 Americans, died in the crash of a New York-bound Polish LOT Ilyushin-62 outside Warsaw. It was the worst airline disaster in Polish history.
