Scores dead in Congo plane crash

Scores Dead In Congo Plane Crash

Culled from Wire news service

Posted to the web 15 April 2008

At least nine people died when a passenger jet smashed into a crowded neighborhood in the African state of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Early reports suggested scores had been killed, but it later emerged that the majority of the 80 people on board the DC-9 had survived the crash in Goma.

About ten cement homes just outside the town's airport were destroyed when the plane crashed.

Congo had one of the worst air safety records in the world, with eight crashes last year.

Officials had put the death toll to at least 60 people when a passenger plane crashed onto a busy market district after taking-off at Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo on Tuesday, a Congolese Red Cross official said.

"At this point there are around 60 people dead who were in the plane," the official said, adding that there were likely to be more casualties on the ground.

A witness in Goma, the capital of eastern North Kivu province, said the Boeing 727 came down on a busy market street.

"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," the witness said.

"It destroyed a building. The two buildings next door are blackened," she added.

Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country the size of western Europe with only a few hundred kilometers of paved roads, has one of the world's worst aviation safety records.

There were eight plane crashes in the country last year, including one in the capital Kinshasa in which an Antonov 26 plunged into a crowded neighborhood, killing more than 50 people.