The Democratic Republic of Congo government has raised the death toll from a military plane crash in the central part of the country to 33, including 13 people on the ground who were killed when the Antonov 26 plane plowed into a crowded market at the end of a runway.
The government had previously reported 22 deaths in the crash which occurred late on Saturday in Boende, 750km northeast of the capital Kinshasa.
With no phone lines, and delays in getting investigation teams to the site, details of the crash and news of the increased death toll reached the capital only late on Monday.
The crash killed all six members of the military crew and fourteen of the 18 passengers aboard the plane, as well as 13 people in the market, authorities said.
The passengers included women and at least one teenager, indicating that some of those aboard were civilians. Authorities said on Monday that a tyre burst as the aircraft was taking off.
”It hit at the end of the runway, after two attempts to stop the plane,” said Vital Kamerhe, a government spokesperson in Kinshasa.
”The plane stayed on its runway course before coming to ground in a little market at the end of the strip.”
DRC, a nation the size of Western Europe, has only a few hundred kilometres of paved roads. People with the means to travel long distances generally do so by plane and by boats, both often badly overcrowded and dilapidated.
The crash came four days after a collision between a ferry and another vessel on a western DRC lake killed more than 180 people. – Sapa-AP