Deadly Plane Crash In Algeria
An Air Algerie jet crashed shortly after takeoff in southern Algeria on Thursday, killing 102 people on board, the airline said.
The crash of the Boeing 737 took place just minutes after the plane left Tamanrasset, in southern Algeria. The plane was headed toward the capital, Algiers.
At least one person survived the crash, airline officials said. The victims included seven French citizens, said Hamdi. The remainder of the 97 passengers, as well as the six crew members, were Algerians.
Bernard Valero, a French Foreign Ministry spokesman, said it could not confirm that seven French citizens were killed. "We are continuing to check. We don't have reliable and fixed numbers," he said.
The French Foreign Ministry, which said in a statement that "close to 100 people" died in the crash, set up a crisis line for relatives of the French victims. French president, Jacques Chirac, expressed his condolences in a message to his Algerian counterpart.
Hamdi said 39 passengers were headed for Algiers and that 58 others were to disembark at a stop in Ghardaia.
Terrorism was not suspected, said an airline spokesman, Hamid Hamdi.
"There was a mechanical problem on takeoff," he said. "There is no element that leads us to think there was a terrorist attack."
Witnesses at the Tamanrasset airport and airline officials said one of the plane's two jet engines caught fire as it was taking off.
Inexperience in dealing with airline accidents — the crash was state-run Air Algerie's first since its founding in 1953 — hampered rescue efforts, said Hamdi.
Prime Minister Ali Benflis convened an emergency crisis unit to deal with the crash, thought to be the first in the history of Algerian commercial aviation. Interior Minister Yazid Zerhouni and Transportation Minister Abdelmalek Sellal were headed to the scene.
Tamanrasset, at the base of the Hoggar Mountains, is a stop for travelers in the Sahara Desert and is known for its ancient archaeological sites and prehistoric paintings and engravings.
Tamanrasset is 800 miles south of Algiers.
Algeria, an oil- and gas-rich nation in North Africa, has been struggling to end a decade-long insurgency by Islamic militants.
Air Algeria flights to Paris were suspended for two years from the summer of 1995, after a hijacking of an Air France plane by Muslim militants.
Most international carriers stopped flights to Algeria in 1994, immediately after the plane was hijacked on Christmas Eve by the Armed Islamic Group, a radical Algerian Muslim faction. Three passengers were killed.
According to the National Transportation Safety Board, the last fatal accident involving a Boeing 737 took place in neighboring Tunisia, when 14 people died in an Egypt Air crash in Tunis.