Plane crash toll rises to 33
By Eddy Isango in Kinshasa, Congo
AAP
December 2, 2003
THE Congo Government has raised the death toll from a plane crash in central Congo to 33, including 13 people on the ground who were killed when the military plane skidded into a crowded market at the end of a runway.
The Government had previously reported 22 deaths in the crash which occurred late Saturday in Boende, 750km north-east of the capital Kinshasa.
With no phone lines, and delays in getting investigation teams to the site, details of the crash and news of the increased death toll reached the capital only late yesterday.
After days of silence about the cause, authorities said that a tyre burst on the Antonov 26 plane just as it was taking off, leaving the pilot unable either to become airborne or brake.
"It hit at the end of the runway, after two attempts to stop the plane," said Vital Kamerhe, a government spokesman in Kinshasa. "The plane stayed on its runaway course before coming to ground in a little market at the end of the strip."
The crash killed all six members of the military crew and fourteen of the 18 passengers aboard the plane, as well as 13 people in the market, authorities said.
The passengers included women and at least one teen-ager, indicating that some of those aboard were civilians.
Congo, a nation the size of Western Europe, has only a few hundred kilometres of paved roads. People with the means to travel long distances generally do so by plane and by boats, both often badly overcrowded and dilapidated.
The crash came four days after a collision between a ferry and another vessel on a west Congo lake killed more than 180 people.