The number of victims in last Thursday’s air disaster, which occured when the rear doors of a cargo plane flew open shortly after takeoff from Kinshasa, sucking passengers to their death, ”will never be known”, said government representative Kikaya Bin Karubi on Monday.
The government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo has launched an investigation into the accident, which involved a Ukrainian plane carrying military personel, policemen and their families to DRC’s second city, Lubumbashi. The death toll has been put at anything between 60 and 170, but the passenger list was incomplete and survivors say the plane was overloaded.
Karubi said he had been informed by the Air Force of 60 people who had disappeared, but state television last Friday reported a figure of 170.
”Apart from the police there were about 100 women with children aboard the plane who were joining their husbands already in Lubumbashi,” Mukalayi Mwamba, a policeman who survived, said. ”There were also about 100 more people who’d got on the plane.”
Mwambi, like others who survived, clung to ropes and netting to stop themselves being sucked out of the plane’s rear door. – Irin