Plane crash in Congo kills 30
Foreign Desk Report

KINSHASA—At least 30 people were killed Thursday after a plane crashed in a poor, crowded suburb of Kinshasa right after takeoff, according to a Congolese Ministry of Information official. Image taken from television shows what remains of one of the Antonov’s two engines.
All 22 on board the plane — 16 passengers and six crew — were killed, as well as up to eight people on the ground, according to Jean-Pierre Eale, an aide to the Democratic Republic of Congo’s information minister. The Russian-made Antonov-26 crashed into at least one house near a crowded marketplace in the country’s capital, Kinshasa, Congolese officials said.
It took off from Kinshasa International Airport, also known as N’Djili International Airport, around 10:40 a.m. en route to Tshikapa in the southern part of the country near the Angolan border, Eale and other Congolese officials said. A few minutes after takeoff, the plane experienced problems and began dumping fuel before establishing radio contact with the airport’s tower, Eale said. Just as it radioed the tower, the plane crashed into the suburb of Masina, he said.
Video of the scene showed smoldering wreckage, including what appeared to be one of the Antonov-26’s two turboprop engines and the charred remains a building. Dozens of men hoisted a water hose to douse the flames. Watch residents help with rescue efforts. The aircraft is owned by local airline El Sam and leased by the Malila company, Congolese transportation official Rashid Patel said.
The Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly Zaire, has a dismal aviation record. There have been at least 24 plane crashes since last year — nearly half of them involving Russian-made Antonovs — according to Aviation Safety Network. Ten of the crashes since October 4, 2006, have resulted in 61 deaths.
The Antonov 26 aircraft crashed in the densely populated Masina district of the Democratic Republic of Congo capital just after take-off from the nearby airport, a goverment minister said. “There were 27 people on the plane and 25 died and two members of the crew, a mechanic and an air hostess survived,” said Michel Bonnardeaux, a spokesman for the UN mission in the DRC, MONUC, quoting local officials. Witnesses said the twin-engined plane exploded in flames on impact. The RVA national aviation authority sent firefighters to help poorly equipped city firemen tackle the blaze. “There were several dead people in the houses,” Information Minister Toussaint Tshilombo Send told AFP. “It’s really premature at this stage to give any exact toll,” the minister stressed. The disaster was the fourth deadly plane accident in DR Congo since June.
In 1996, a larger Antonov 32 hit a Kinshasa market and the final death toll was more than 300. Humanitarian Affairs Minister Jean-Claude Muyambo told AFP that the cargo plane belonged to the Africa One airline and had been headed to Tshikapa in the vast country’s central Kasai-Occidental province. “The aircraft is completely burned out,” a senior police officer said at the scene. “The number of people also killed in the houses it struck isn’t yet known.”
The Antonov’s crew had informed airport authorities that five crew and 14 passengers were on board, but an RVA official told AFP it was common practice to declare an incorrect passenger manifest to avoid taxes. The crew were Russians, according to a Russian embassy official in Kinshasa, Alexander Turtsinovitch, contacted by telephone by the Itar-tass news agency in Moscow, but he did not know how many there were.