After a two day search, Cameroonians rescued Tuesday the black box and several bodies from the accident site where the Kenyan jetliner crashed after going missing on Saturday, said officials.

"We found the flight data recorder. We still need to recover the cockpit voice recorder," said civil aviation director general Ignatius Sana Juma.

The data recorded by the black box could help investigators figure out why the six month old plane went down after lift-off. The second black box, the cockpit voice recorder which captures the communications between the pilots and the air traffic controllers, had not been found.

"The plane fell head first. Its nose was buried in the mangrove swamp," said Thomas Sobakam, chief of meteorology for the Douala airport. He said the jet disintegrated on impact.

Initial reports said that none of the 114 passengers and crew on board survived, but Kenyan government spokesman Alfred Mutua said he would wait for word from the rescue teams before confirming the death toll.

"It was very well planned in terms of search and rescue and I do not believe the flight could have been found any earlier," Kenyan government spokesperson Alfred Mutua told AFP.

"We continue to hope for the best until that time when the medical team comes back and officially announces how many people have died," he said in Nairobi.

The airplane was found in a swampy area, some 100 km from the airport in Douala, the Cameroonian commercial capital.