MBANGA-PONGO, Cameroon — None of the 114 people aboard a Kenya Airways flight survived its crash into a thick mangrove swamp over the weekend, an official said today after returning from the water-filled crater he said the plane left.

Asked whether anyone survived, Luc Ndjodo, a local government official in charge of the recovery effort, said: "No."

Ndjodo added he had surveyed the entire site, which he described as covering only a few hundred yards in diameter and saw no survivors: "I was there. I saw none."

As workers brought out bodies and body parts and placed them in ambulances driven to within a mile or so of the crater, Ndjodo said little of the plane was visible. Only members of the recovery team were being allowed to the site.

"We assume that a large part of the plane is underwater," Ndjodo said. "I only saw pieces."

Earlier, Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport, said the plane nose-dived into the swamp and disintegrated on impact.

"The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp," Sobakam had said earlier. "It's very unlikely that there are any survivors, but until we have completely surveyed the area, we are not going to announce that."

The plane had taken off from Douala, Cameroon's commercial capital, and its wreckage was found just 12 miles from the town's outskirts. The cause of the crash remained unclear.

Among the passengers was Nairobi-based Associated Press correspondent Anthony Mitchell, who had been on assignment in the region.

A U.S. Embassy official who saw the crash site from a plane today said it would have been impossible to find from the air without coordinates provided by searchers on the ground. He said searchers in planes saw nothing when they flew over before sunset Sunday after hearing reports the plane could have gone down in the swamp.

The U.S. and France are among the nations providing aircraft and other equipment to help the Cameroonians search. A team from the U.S. was expected in Cameroon on Tuesday.