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100 Soldiers, 157 Others Die In Algerian Plane Crash

  Around 100 Algerian military personnel were on board an army plane that crashed on Wednesday near an airbase outside the capital, a military source … Continue reading 100 Soldiers, 157 Others Die In Algerian Plane Crash


(FILES) In this file photo taken on March 04, 2004 a Russian Ilyushin 76 (IL-76) plane is seen at Moscow’s airport. Around 100 Algerian military personnel were on board an army plane that crashed on April 11, 2018 near an airbase outside the capital, a military source told AFP. The aircraft is an Ilyushin II-76, which is capable of carrying around 120 passengers, according to the source, who did not want to be named. STR / AFP
FILE COPY A Russian Ilyushin 76 (IL-76) plane is seen at Moscow’s airport. Around 100 Algerian military personnel were on board an army plane that crashed on April 11, 2018 near an airbase outside the capital, a military source told AFP.  Photo Credit: STR / AFP

 

Around 100 Algerian military personnel were on board an army plane that crashed on Wednesday near an airbase outside the capital, a military source told AFP.

An AFP photographer at the scene saw the charred wreckage of the plane in a field near the Boufarik airbase from where the plane had taken off.

Hundreds of ambulances and dozens of fire trucks with their sirens wailing rushed to the scene of the crash about 25 kilometres (15 miles) southwest of Algiers.

The defence ministry said in a statement that 247 passengers and 10 crew were killed without mentioning any survivors.

Deputy Defence Minister General Ahmed Gaid Salah visited the site and ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the crash, the defence ministry said.

The Ilyushin II-76 transport plane was bound for Tindouf in southwest Algeria.

Algeria has suffered a string of military and civilian aviation disasters.

Two military planes collided mid-flight in December 2012 during a training exercise in Tlemcen, in the far west of the country, killing the pilots of both planes.

In February 2014, 77 people died when a military plane carrying army personnel and family members crashed between Tamanrasset in southern Algeria and the eastern city of Constantine.

Only one person survived after the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft came down in the mountainous Oum El Bouaghi region.

The defence ministry blamed that crash on bad weather.

An Air Algerie passenger plane flying from Burkina Faso to Algiers crashed in northern Mali in July 2014, killing all 116 people on board including 54 French nationals.

In October the same year, a military plane crashed in the south of the country during a training exercise, killing the two men on board.

That came more than a decade after all but one of the 103 people on an Air Algerie Boeing 737-200 died in March 2003 when it crashed on takeoff in the country’s south after an engine caught fire.

 

AFP