Congo fired its transport minister Friday as emergency workers
extinguished the last flames from a plane crash in the capital and
found still more bodies in the wreckage. The death toll climbed to
at least 50, officials said.
Saleh Kinyongo, spokesman for Congo's humanitarian affairs
ministry, said 28 bodies had been retrieved so far, all of them
residents of the neighborhood where the plane crashed. Twenty-two
passengers on the flight were presumed dead, he said.
The cargo plane slammed into three houses Thursday just after
taking off from Kinshasa's international airport on a flight to
central Congo. Six homes were destroyed in either the crash or the
conflagration that burned until early Friday, the humanitarian
affairs ministry said.
A government spokesman announced the firing of Transport
Minister Remy Kuseyo's on state television, but did not say if
Kuseyo was accused of wrongdoing or negligence.
The death toll is likely to rise as the inflicted area was a
crowded poor neighborhood and the fire created by the crash set
over ten houses on fire.
The Russian-made Antonov-26 plane, belonging to a private
airline company El-Sam, crashed at 10:30 local time (0930 GMT)
Thursday, on its way from Kinshasa to the country's central city of
Tshikapa.
Eye witnesses said they saw the plane become unsteady soon after
taking off, and it later struck a mango tree and slammed into the
neighborhood.
The UN mission in Congo stationed at a nearby airport sent
firefighters to the spot and managed to put the fire under control,
witnesses said.
DRC's Transport Ministry has sent a team to investigate the
cause of the crash.
There are some 50 airline companies in DRC, with their fleets
composed mainly of aging Russian planes.
Poor maintenance and the age of these planes has been blamed for
the high number of accidents involving the country's airlines in
recent years, with Thursday's accident the fifth since July,
2007.
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(Xinhua News Agency, AP October 6, 2007)
