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Rescue workers search for bodies after plane crash

UN peacekeepers and rescue workers searched through the smoldering rubble left after an airplane careened off a runway and crashed into a bustling market area in the Democratic Republic of Congo, killing at least 33 people and injuring more than 100.

The DC-9 failed to lift off on Tuesday from the airport in the eastern town of Goma, instead ramming through a dividing fence and bursting into flames near the market. Most of the 79 passengers and six crew members on the plane were evacuated but dozens on the ground were feared dead, officials said.

“I am sure people are buried” under the rubble, Michel Bwinika, a member of parliament, said at the crash site as police, aid workers and UN soldiers looked for bodies.

Crew members and UN troops managed to evacuate most of the 79 passengers from the jetliner before it caught fire, said Dirk Cramers, a spokesman for the private Congolese company Hewa Bora Airways.

However, at least two passengers were among the 33 dead, Congolese Transport Minister Charles Mwando Nsimba said yesterday, warning that the toll would likely rise.

“We have to take into account the fact that there are bodies still trapped under the rubble,” he said.

The Red Cross said 113 injured were being treated at local hospitals and clinics.

Among those on board were American Marybeth Mosier, a Christian missionary who works in neighboring Tanzania, and her two children.

She said her 14-year-old daughter, April, climbed through a crack in the plane and was pushed through by another passenger. Her three-year-old son broke his leg.

Others weren’t so lucky.

“As we were rushing down the aisle, smoke was coming up through the floor. A man was trapped under the seats and he was burning,” Mosier said at Goma’s Heal Africa hospital.

She said she tried to pull him up, but “there were so many people pushing ... I thought this man was so badly hurt and I couldn’t block the way.”

“I climbed over the tops of the seats” to escape, she said.
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