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UN troops search for survivors
16/04/2008 15:23 - (SA)
Goma - United Nations peacekeepers and rescue workers searched on Wednesday for bodies amid the smouldering rubble left after a jetliner careened off a runway, plowing into a bustling market area and killing at least 21 people on the ground.
Most of the 79 people on board survived, officials said. The Congolese DC-9 crashed on Tuesday after takeoff, going down in flames near the busy outdoor market in the eastern town of Goma.
Crew members and UN troops managed to evacuate "the majority of the passengers", said Dirk Cramers, a spokesperson for the private Congolese company Hewa Bora Airways. But witnesses said dozens were killed on the ground.
"I am sure people are buried" under the rubble, said Michel Bwinika, a member of parliament visiting the crash site.
"We have already picked up many bodies - dozens of bodies. There are a lot of flames, which makes it difficult to know if the bodies we are picking up are those of passengers of the plane or else passers-by or people that lived in the area where the plane crashed," regional Governor Julien Mpaluku said.
'They were still conscious, moving'
Rescue workers carried about 20 bodies out of the wreckage, said Anna Ridout of the aid agency, World Vision.
Ridout said: "I talked to a man who rescued seven people, including a six-month-old baby, from an exit door. They were still conscious and moving. But he couldn't go any further because he couldn't see anything. There was too much smoke."
The Red Cross said 113 injured were being treated at local hospitals and clinics.
Cramers put the death toll at 21 and said "most of the victims were people on the ground". The airline was "still trying to count the number of victims and wounded, but until now none of the 79 people on the official list of passengers and crew have been found dead", he said.
EU bans Hewa Bora
The remains of the cockpit and tail rose over the flattened fuselage, reduced to a charred and flattened mixture of smoking debris and ripped clothes and destroyed wooden and cement shops.
DRC, which was struggling to emerge from a 1998-2002 civil war, had experienced more fatal crashes since 1945 than any other African country, according to the non-profit Aviation Safety Network.
Last week, the European Union added Hewa Bora to its list of airlines banned from flying in the European Union.
No Congolese airlines now fly into the US, although they are not banned from doing so, according to Federal Aviation Administration spokesperson Alison Duquette.
World Vision, whose staffers went to the scene about a half-mile (half-kilometre) from its office, said in a statement that the plane "failed to leave the ground," plowing "through wooden houses and shops in the highly-populated Birere market".
A former pilot, Dunia Sindani, was among the surviving passengers. He told a local radio station that the plane suffered a problem in one wheel - possibly a flat tire - and did not have enough power for lift off.
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