The death toll from Friday’s passenger plane crash in northeast Democratic Republic of Congo on Saturday rose to 74, the Red Cross said, after the discovery of 28 more bodies in the wreckage.
“There are 74 bodies in the morgue at Kisangani general hospital, of which 28 were brought in this [Saturday] morning,” the organization’s Congolese secretary general Mario-Real Shutsha said.
Earlier in the day, Hewa Bora Airways director Stavros Papaioannoua said there were 56 confirmed deaths and warned the toll could rise further.
The Boeing 727 operated by Hewa Bora crashed at Kisangani airport as it attempted to land in heavy rain with 112 passengers and six crew on board.
The plane was on a regular commercial route from Kinshasa to Kisangani and Goma when it hit a storm on its approach to the airport, a local administration spokesman said.
Jean-Marc Mambimbi, a doctor Oriental Province, said more than 40 people were still being treated for injuries.
Papaioannoua said Red Cross staff worked in difficult conditions until the early hours of Saturday to free the injured and remove bodies from the plane wreckage.
All three pilots and a mechanic were killed in the crash, he added, but two air hostesses were among the injured.
He rejected a toll of 127 deaths the Congolese transport ministry had earlier given to certain media, saying the plane could seat only 114 passengers.
The government said the country would observe a period of national mourning until tomorrow.
Congolese President Joseph Kabila traveled with several officials, including the minister of transport, to Kisangani on Saturday to visit the wounded at the hospital where they are being treated, the radio station said.
The cause of the cash is not yet known, but Papaioannoua said the pilots flew into “a heavy storm.”
“They wanted to land, especially since two other planes had done so just before,” he said.
Hewa Bora Airways last accident was in April 2008 when 50 people died after a DC-9 crashed after taking off from Goma airport into a neighborhood of Nord-Kivu Province.
Plane accidents are frequent in DR Congo, often blamed on ageing and poorly maintained aircraft, the flouting of safety rules and bad weather. Each of its 50 or so airlines has been blacklisted by the EU.
In early April a UN plane missed its landing at Kinshasa as a result of bad whether, causing 32 deaths.
It was the first crash involving the UN mission in DR Congo, since the operation was launched in 1999.
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