Crashed UN plane's black box found

Investigators recovered on Wednesday the black box flight recorder of a UN-chartered plane that crashed as it tried to land near the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, leaving 32 people dead.

A spokesperson for the United Nations mission in the Democatic Republic of the Congo, Monusco, told reporters that the recorder was now being studied by local investigators who are trying to discover how the accident on Monday occurred.

Only one person survived the tragedy, one of the worst disasters involving UN transport, in which a Bombardier CRJ-100 plane hit the ground as the pilot tried to land in torrential rain.

“The work took time and finished very late in the night,” said Monusco spokesperson Madnodje Mounoubai.

“All the bodies have been identified,” Mounoubai added, without giving the nationality of the victims.

The plane was carrying 29 passengers—mainly UN officials and peacekeepers—and a four-person crew on a regular UN flight from the northeastern city of Kisangani to Kinshasa’s N’Djili airport.

Two Belgians, three South Africans and at least one Ivorian are known to be among the victims, along with four staff from the Georgian company Airzena Georgian Airways, from which the UN had chartered the plane.

A Congolese journalist, the only survivor among the 33 people who were on the plane, was still being treated on Wednesday, in a hospital close to the airport.

Plane accidents are common in the DRC, but Monday’s was the first involving UN transport since the start of the UN mission in 1999.—AFP