At least 20 people were killed after a plane flown by the Belgian head of a local airline crashed while trying to land in western Democratic Republic of the Congo (DR Congo), officials said.
The Filair Czech-made twin turboprop crashed on Wednesday afternoon at Bandundu after a 300km flight from the capital Kinshasa, apparently after running out of fuel, Bandundu Province Deputy Governor Vicky Mboso Muteba said.
“They have brought out the people, we have 19 bodies in the morgue,” Mboso said.
One of two survivors later died in hospital.
PILOT KILLED
The owner of private airline Filair, Belgian Daniel Philemotte, 62, was at the controls of the Let-410 plane and was among those killed, along with the copilot and stewardess, Mboso added.
Mboso said that after an abortive attempt to land, the aircraft turned away and crashed toward the edge of the city of Bandundu, hitting an earthen house whose residents had managed to flee in time.
There was no explosion, said Mboso, who was one of the first to arrive on the site along with soldiers from MONUC, the UN mission in the Congo.
“Subject to expert opinion ... the presumed cause could be a lack of fuel,” Mboso said.
The Czech-made Let-410 normally carries up to 19 passengers.
An official of Kinshasa’s small Ndolo Airport, from which the flight took off, confirmed the crash, but did not provide any additional information.
BUSINESSMAN
A Belgian diplomat in Kinshasa said Philemotte was a well-known businessman in the country and had recently married a Congolese.
The Democratic Republic of Congo’s aviation sector, which is littered with ageing Soviet-era planes, is generally viewed as being in a chronic state of disrepair and crashes are frequent.
All of the country’s 50-odd registered airlines have been placed on a EU blacklist, banning them from flying into European airspace.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in