By Xinhua
Kinshasa : The death toll from Thursday’s cargo plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) capital Kinshasa has risen to 43 people, hospital sources said Friday.
The crash also injured some 30 people, most of whom were in critical conditions, the sources said.
The dead included 20 passengers and three crew members, Dede Ngamba, a Congolese crew member who survived the crash, told Xinhua, saying mechanic failure rather than overloading was the cause of the crash.
His claim has not yet been confirmed by the country’s aviation administration.
The death toll is likely to rise as the inflicted area was a crowded poor neighborhood and the fire created by the crash set over ten houses on fire.
The death toll from Thursday’s cargo plane crash in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s (DRC) capital Kinshasa has risen to 43 people, hospital sources said Friday.
The Russian-made Antonov-26 plane, belonging to a private airline company El-Sam, crashed at 10:30 local time (0930 GMT) Thursday, on its way from Kinshasa to the country’s central city of Tshikapa.
Eye witnesses said they saw the plane become unsteady soon after taking off, and it later struck a mango tree and slammed into the neighborhood.
The UN mission in Congo stationed at a nearby airport sent firefighters to the spot and managed to put the fire under control, witnesses said.
DRC’s Transport Ministry has sent a team to investigate the cause of the crash.
There are some 50 airline companies in DRC, with their fleets composed mainly of aging Russian planes.
Poor maintenance and the age of these planes has been blamed for the high number of accidents involving the country’s airlines in recent years, with Thursday’s accident the fifth since July, 2007.
