Plane crash kills 23 at DR Congo city

Twenty-three bodies were recovered yesterday after a small plane crashed on take-off into a densely populated area of the city of Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo, rescue workers said.

“We are up to 23 bodies now,” Goma rescue service coordinator Joseph Makundi told AFP.

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The dead are believed to include all those on board the plane as well as people on the ground.

Images from the scene showed plumes of black smoke and flames apparently from the burning plane as locals looked on.

Rescue workers were also seen combing through the plane’s burned-out fuselage.

The Dornier-228 aircraft had been headed for the city of Beni, 350 kilometres north of Goma when it went down in a residential area near the airport in the east of the country.

“There were 17 passengers on board and two crew members. It took off around 9-9.10 am (0700 GMT),” Busy Bee airline staff member Heritier Said Mamadou said.

Busy Bee, a recently established company, has three planes serving routes in the North Kivu province.

One of the company’s maintenance workers at the site quoted by news site actualite.cd blamed a “technical problem”.

The precise number of casualties on the plane and on the ground was not yet known.