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Last Updated: Apr 15th, 2008 - 18:25:25 |
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - More than 70 people were killed when a Congolese domestic airliner taking off from the eastern city of Goma crashed into a crowded market district and caught fire, witnesses and officials said.
At least six people on board -- including the two pilots and two children -- survived the crash of the Hewa Bora Airways passenger jet in Goma, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North Kivu province, the local governor said. It was believed other survivors may also have been pulled out.
More than 45 people were injured in the crash, the latest aviation disaster to hit Congo, a vast central African state the size of western Europe which is still recovering from a war and has one of the world's worst air safety records.
The Hewa Bora McDonnell Douglas DC-9 was taking off on a flight to the Congolese capital Kinshasa when it slewed into the teeming market district of Birere, a warren of single-storey shops and stalls which were crowded at that time of day.
Officials had first identified the aircraft as a Boeing 727.
"I was in my seat with my seat belt fastened. There was a big crash. We jumped up and found our way out. We could feel the fire behind us," said one of the survivors, 51-year-old Frederic Katemo, who said he scrambled out through the cockpit.
He suffered only singed hair and a bruised leg.
The nose and cockpit section of the airliner was left largely intact, jutting into the debris of crushed stalls and shattered houses in a street of the Birere district.
Residents heard a big explosion, which flattened at least one building, scattering bricks and masonry, and set several more on fire. A large plume of smoke rose from the crash site.
"Half of the plane has broken off. There is a fire towards the back. People are coming with buckets of water to put out the fire. The U.N. is here trying to keep back the crowds," a witness at the crash scene said.
North Kivu governor Julien Paluku told Reuters there were 79 passengers and six crew on board. "Six people have been saved, two pilots and four passengers including two children," he said.
DEADLY AFRICAN SKIES
A Congolese Red Cross official said the death toll was expected to rise, but the recovery of bodies was made more difficult by the fires raging on the ground.
Congolese police and United Nations soldiers, members of the U.N. peacekeeping contingent in Congo, struggled to keep back hordes of onlookers who swarmed over the crash site.
Goma airport, located within sight of a nearby volcano, has suffered several accidents in the past, with planes overshooting the runway and endangering homes built up near the airport.
"We have been waiting for something like this to happen. There have been lots of accidents just behind here at the airport," Serge Ukundji, a conservationist with the Frankfurt Zoological Society who lives in Goma, told Reuters. He said he saw the pilot and co-pilot dragged alive from the crashed plane.
Hewa Bora Airways officials were not immediately available for comment.
Last week, the European Union added Congo's Hewa Bora Airways to a list of aviation companies banned from flying in the 27-nation bloc over safety concerns.
There were eight plane crashes in Democratic Republic of Congo last year, according to the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office (ACRO).
This included one in the capital Kinshasa in which an Antonov 26 plunged into a crowded neighborhood, killing more than 50 people.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says the air accident rate in Africa is six times worse than in the rest of the world and calls this an "embarrassment".
Aviation safety experts single out Democratic Republic of Congo, which is still struggling to recover from a devastating 1998-2003 war, as one of the worst offenders. The huge country only has a few hundred kilometers (miles) of paved roads.
Passengers and cargo are packed onto ageing planes, often Soviet-built, which fly to multiple remote destinations across the former Belgian central African colony.
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