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'We could feel fire behind us'
15/04/2008 22:49 - (SA)
Goma - 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 UN 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
UN 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).
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