New Delhi, July 11 -- NASSAU - The flight out of Lynden Pindling International Airport was a short one - no more than thirty minutes across the water to San Andros Airport on the largest island in the Bahamian chain. For members of the Da Pond Band, it was the journey home on the afternoon of their country's 53rd Independence Day. They did not arrive.

A Cessna 402 operated by Flamingo Air crashed in the bush on North Andros Island on Friday shortly after 1 p.m., killing all 10 people aboard - nine passengers and a pilot - in what Prime Minister Philip Brave Davis called "a day of mourning" for a nation that had spent the morning in celebration.

Police Commissioner Shanta Knowles told reporters that rescue personnel found one person show...