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| Africa North |
| 51 French nationals aboard missing Algerian plane |
| 2014-07-24 |
An Air Algérie flight from Burkina Faso to Algeria that went missing over northern Mali early Thursday was carrying dozens of French nationals, according to a senior French official. A total of 51 French citizens were among the 110 passengers and six crew aboard flight AH 5017, French Transport Minister Frédéric Cuvillier said. More than six hours after the flight was scheduled to arrive in Algiers, an Algerian aviation official told Reuters the plane had crashed. But he declined to provide any details of the location of the plane or the cause of the crash. "I can confirm that it has crashed," said the official, who declined to be named. France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius later told reporters the plane had “probably crashed”. He said France has dispatched two Mirage fighter jets to search the area where the plane went missing but that “no trace of the aircraft has yet been found”. This contradicted an Air Algérie announcement, made via Twitter moments earlier, that the plane had crashed near Tilemsi, some 70 km from the Malian city of Gao. Conflicting reports There have been several conflicting reports as to the nationalities of the plane’s passengers. According to Burkinabe Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedrago, there were 50 French citizens, 24 Burkina Faso nationals, six Lebanese, five Canadians, four Algerians, two Luxembourg nationals, one Swiss, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian on flight AH 5017. But an Air Algerie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference that the passenger list also included one Belgian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian and that there had been eight, and not six, Lebanese citizens on board. He said there were no Malians on the list. The AFP news agency quoted officials as saying there were at least 20 Lebanese passengers on the plane. A spokeswoman for SEPLA, Spain's pilots’ union, told Reuters that the aircraft’s six crew were all from Spain, but could not give further details. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #2 Perhaps here |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2014-07-24 17:14 |
| #1 Linkie no workie |
| Posted by: Mullah Richard 2014-07-24 16:11 |