Accident in Malabo
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Accident in Malabo
An Air Equateur plane crashed this moprning after taking off from Malabo for Bata in Equatorial Guinea
AE is a new airline flying between cities in Eq Guinea
Early reports indicate 85 dead , although aircraft only had capacity for 48 pax
No indication of aircraft type
Links in Spanish
http://iblnews.com/story.php?id=1180
http://actualidad.terra.es/nacional/...aba_405636.htm
AE is a new airline flying between cities in Eq Guinea
Early reports indicate 85 dead , although aircraft only had capacity for 48 pax
No indication of aircraft type
Links in Spanish
http://iblnews.com/story.php?id=1180
http://actualidad.terra.es/nacional/...aba_405636.htm
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Latests news item
Antonov crashes in Eq. Guinea; 55 aboard killed.
Reuters
MALABO (Reuters) - A Russian-made plane carrying 55 people crashed shortly after takeoff in Equatorial Guinea on Saturday and those on board were all feared dead, government officials said.
The Antonov 32 plane, owned by local company Equatair, was on an internal flight between the capital Malabo on Bioko island and the city of Bata on the mainland.
"The plane crashed near Baney, 17 kilometers (10 miles) from Malabo," Ricardo Mangue Obama, a deputy prime minister in charge of the government task force investigating the crash, told Reuters by telephone.
"We don't know the cause of the accident. We can't confirm any death toll but clearly it was a serious accident and we have no information on any survivors so far," he said.
Mangue Obama said the 55 on board included six members of the crew. Local media reports said as many as 80 people could have been on the plane but there was no confirmation of that.
The transport minister told state television the airline had made the manifest available to authorities and that military aircraft searching for the plane had located it near Baney. A team of investigators would be dispatched to the site on Sunday.
The plane left Malabo around 1000 GMT on Saturday but disappeared off the radar screen shortly afterwards.
Throughout the day, relatives of the passengers waited at the airport to know about the fate of their loved ones at the airport, but official information was scant and only in the evening authorities confirmed that the plane had crashed.
Condolences to all relatives !
Reuters
MALABO (Reuters) - A Russian-made plane carrying 55 people crashed shortly after takeoff in Equatorial Guinea on Saturday and those on board were all feared dead, government officials said.
The Antonov 32 plane, owned by local company Equatair, was on an internal flight between the capital Malabo on Bioko island and the city of Bata on the mainland.
"The plane crashed near Baney, 17 kilometers (10 miles) from Malabo," Ricardo Mangue Obama, a deputy prime minister in charge of the government task force investigating the crash, told Reuters by telephone.
"We don't know the cause of the accident. We can't confirm any death toll but clearly it was a serious accident and we have no information on any survivors so far," he said.
Mangue Obama said the 55 on board included six members of the crew. Local media reports said as many as 80 people could have been on the plane but there was no confirmation of that.
The transport minister told state television the airline had made the manifest available to authorities and that military aircraft searching for the plane had located it near Baney. A team of investigators would be dispatched to the site on Sunday.
The plane left Malabo around 1000 GMT on Saturday but disappeared off the radar screen shortly afterwards.
Throughout the day, relatives of the passengers waited at the airport to know about the fate of their loved ones at the airport, but official information was scant and only in the evening authorities confirmed that the plane had crashed.
Condolences to all relatives !
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When is the Antonov carnage in Africa going to end?
I am sure there is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft, but there is definitely a problem with the way these aircraft are maintained / operated.
I am sure there is nothing inherently wrong with the aircraft, but there is definitely a problem with the way these aircraft are maintained / operated.
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More from News 24
Sixty people were killed when a Russian-built Antonov plane crashed in flames in Equatorial Guinea shortly after take-off from the capital Malabo, said President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Obiang declared a three-day period of national mourning following Saturday's crash which, he said, had killed mostly young Equatorial Guineans and women.
The plane, which went down on a domestic flight in thick jungle, "was completely destroyed, burned and there were no survivors," national radio announced.
Intense grief, mourning
"Our people are going through the worst moments of grief, consternation and sadness ever known in their history," Obiang declared.
At first the government had said a total of 55 people were on the ageing 48-seater Antonov-24, while the operating company, the private airline Ecuatair, said its records showed there were 35 passengers and 10 crew.
Airport sources said crews in the West African country are often bribed to take additional people on board.
The radio said many of the victims were Malabo college students going on holiday from the island of Bioko where the capital is situated to their homes.
The funerals of the 60 victims will take place on Monday. A presidential decree said flags would be flown at half-mast during the mourning period.
President Obiang called for an inquiry into the causes of the accident to prevent similar events from occurring.
Identifying the victims
It took rescuers until Sunday to reach the crash site in a remote area some 30km from Malabo, as they had to skirt the 3 007m high Mount Basile. Bad weather, including non-stop rain, made the operation even more difficult.
Some of the remains of the dead, charred beyond recognition, were taken in plastic bags to the main hospital in Malabo.
Authorities quickly abandoned an impromptu identification process when after holding up the purse of a female victim, the crowd surged forward, prompting clashes with police.
A crisis unit has been set up to oversee the salvage operation, identify the dead and report on developments.
What went wrong
An eyewitness said on Saturday he saw the aircraft go down shortly after takeoff at 10:00 from Malabo for the city of Bata on the Equatorial Guinea mainland.
The wreckage was not located until eight hours later near the district of Baney, the government statement indicated.
The plane skidded over trees for a distance of about a kilometre before it crashed, according to aerial photographs.
Ecuatair has only one other plane, a Soviet-built Yak-40.
Most of the planes, piloted mainly by Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians, are Soviet-era aircraft that often no longer meet international flight standards and are not allowed to land at airports in other countries in the region.
In April Equatorial Guinea authorities grounded another local company, the Union de Transportes Aereo de Guinea Ecuatorial, for safety reasons after a series of technical breakdowns.
Obiang declared a three-day period of national mourning following Saturday's crash which, he said, had killed mostly young Equatorial Guineans and women.
The plane, which went down on a domestic flight in thick jungle, "was completely destroyed, burned and there were no survivors," national radio announced.
Intense grief, mourning
"Our people are going through the worst moments of grief, consternation and sadness ever known in their history," Obiang declared.
At first the government had said a total of 55 people were on the ageing 48-seater Antonov-24, while the operating company, the private airline Ecuatair, said its records showed there were 35 passengers and 10 crew.
Airport sources said crews in the West African country are often bribed to take additional people on board.
The radio said many of the victims were Malabo college students going on holiday from the island of Bioko where the capital is situated to their homes.
The funerals of the 60 victims will take place on Monday. A presidential decree said flags would be flown at half-mast during the mourning period.
President Obiang called for an inquiry into the causes of the accident to prevent similar events from occurring.
Identifying the victims
It took rescuers until Sunday to reach the crash site in a remote area some 30km from Malabo, as they had to skirt the 3 007m high Mount Basile. Bad weather, including non-stop rain, made the operation even more difficult.
Some of the remains of the dead, charred beyond recognition, were taken in plastic bags to the main hospital in Malabo.
Authorities quickly abandoned an impromptu identification process when after holding up the purse of a female victim, the crowd surged forward, prompting clashes with police.
A crisis unit has been set up to oversee the salvage operation, identify the dead and report on developments.
What went wrong
An eyewitness said on Saturday he saw the aircraft go down shortly after takeoff at 10:00 from Malabo for the city of Bata on the Equatorial Guinea mainland.
The wreckage was not located until eight hours later near the district of Baney, the government statement indicated.
The plane skidded over trees for a distance of about a kilometre before it crashed, according to aerial photographs.
Ecuatair has only one other plane, a Soviet-built Yak-40.
Most of the planes, piloted mainly by Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians, are Soviet-era aircraft that often no longer meet international flight standards and are not allowed to land at airports in other countries in the region.
In April Equatorial Guinea authorities grounded another local company, the Union de Transportes Aereo de Guinea Ecuatorial, for safety reasons after a series of technical breakdowns.
GunsssR4ever
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RIP
Hundreds of people mourned on Monday at a cemetery in the Equatorial Guinea capital of Malabo as most of the 60 known victims of a fiery weekend plane crash were buried in a common grave.
The coffins carrying the remains of 57 of the 60 official victims - who could not be identified as their bodies were burned or dismembered beyond recognition in Saturday's crash - were placed side by side in the vast mass grave.
The three bodies officially identified were returned to the victims' families for burial in their respective villages, hospital officials in Malabo said.
'We weren't able to identify my nephew, but I know he was on board'
An overloaded Russian-built Antonov-24 passenger plane, carrying at least 60 people despite its maximum capacity of 48 passengers and four crew members, crashed in flames shortly after take-off from Malabo, in a dense jungle area.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said on Sunday there were 60 people on board the plane, but an airport official said there may have been as many as 80 people crowded on the plane, some of whom could have bribed their way aboard.
Obiang said the victims were mostly young people and women. The radio confirmed many were Malabo college students leaving the island of Bioko where the capital is situated for home on the central African mainland.
The funeral officially ended operations to identify the bodies of Saturday's crash, leaving many relatives not knowing whether they had buried their loved ones.
"We weren't able to identify my nephew, but I know he was on board," said Juan, a civil servant in his 50s seated among other families at the cemetery.
'We don't have the necessary means to decode the black boxes'
Small bouquets of wilted flowers placed on the wooden coffins could not mask the odour of decaying flesh that permeated the air.
Rescue workers were unable to reach the wreckage for about a day, and the damage was so devastating that it was unlikely anybody will ever know for sure just how many people were on the plane.
The Soviet-era aircraft was operated by the company Ecuatorial Express Airlines, known as Ecuatair.
Ecuatair, owned by a Kazakh businessman, is among a handful of companies serving domestic African routes on planes that no longer meet international flight standards and are banned from landing at airports in other countries in the region.
Most such planes are piloted mainly by Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians and crews in Equatorial Guinea, a small former Spanish colony, are often bribed to carry extra passengers, airport sources said.
At the funeral site three bulldozers and dump trucks were brought in to help with the excavation.
Despite their urgency to get the bodies buried as quickly as possible, grave diggers attempted to sculpt small walls in the mass grave to separate the coffins.
Rescue workers at the crash site, where pieces of plane and bodies were strewn over a wide area, found the Antonov's two orange "black box" flight recorders but no trace of survivors.
The black boxes were taken initially to the hospital late on Sunday, and then were picked up by men who had arrived in a vehicle dispatched by the president's office.
"Here we don't have the necessary means to decode the black boxes so we're going to call on foreign experts," Second Deputy Prime Minister Richardo Mangue Omaba Nfubea said.
A presidential decree said flags would be flown at half-mast during the three-day national mourning period, which started at midnight on Sunday (23h00 GMT).
Equatorial Guinea, with a population of just over one million, is in the midst of an oil boom, and has seen double-digit growth since the mid-1990s. - Sapa-AFP
The coffins carrying the remains of 57 of the 60 official victims - who could not be identified as their bodies were burned or dismembered beyond recognition in Saturday's crash - were placed side by side in the vast mass grave.
The three bodies officially identified were returned to the victims' families for burial in their respective villages, hospital officials in Malabo said.
'We weren't able to identify my nephew, but I know he was on board'
An overloaded Russian-built Antonov-24 passenger plane, carrying at least 60 people despite its maximum capacity of 48 passengers and four crew members, crashed in flames shortly after take-off from Malabo, in a dense jungle area.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said on Sunday there were 60 people on board the plane, but an airport official said there may have been as many as 80 people crowded on the plane, some of whom could have bribed their way aboard.
Obiang said the victims were mostly young people and women. The radio confirmed many were Malabo college students leaving the island of Bioko where the capital is situated for home on the central African mainland.
The funeral officially ended operations to identify the bodies of Saturday's crash, leaving many relatives not knowing whether they had buried their loved ones.
"We weren't able to identify my nephew, but I know he was on board," said Juan, a civil servant in his 50s seated among other families at the cemetery.
'We don't have the necessary means to decode the black boxes'
Small bouquets of wilted flowers placed on the wooden coffins could not mask the odour of decaying flesh that permeated the air.
Rescue workers were unable to reach the wreckage for about a day, and the damage was so devastating that it was unlikely anybody will ever know for sure just how many people were on the plane.
The Soviet-era aircraft was operated by the company Ecuatorial Express Airlines, known as Ecuatair.
Ecuatair, owned by a Kazakh businessman, is among a handful of companies serving domestic African routes on planes that no longer meet international flight standards and are banned from landing at airports in other countries in the region.
Most such planes are piloted mainly by Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians and crews in Equatorial Guinea, a small former Spanish colony, are often bribed to carry extra passengers, airport sources said.
At the funeral site three bulldozers and dump trucks were brought in to help with the excavation.
Despite their urgency to get the bodies buried as quickly as possible, grave diggers attempted to sculpt small walls in the mass grave to separate the coffins.
Rescue workers at the crash site, where pieces of plane and bodies were strewn over a wide area, found the Antonov's two orange "black box" flight recorders but no trace of survivors.
The black boxes were taken initially to the hospital late on Sunday, and then were picked up by men who had arrived in a vehicle dispatched by the president's office.
"Here we don't have the necessary means to decode the black boxes so we're going to call on foreign experts," Second Deputy Prime Minister Richardo Mangue Omaba Nfubea said.
A presidential decree said flags would be flown at half-mast during the three-day national mourning period, which started at midnight on Sunday (23h00 GMT).
Equatorial Guinea, with a population of just over one million, is in the midst of an oil boom, and has seen double-digit growth since the mid-1990s. - Sapa-AFP
