Looters Swarm At Plane Crash Site

Impoverished residents in the capital of Central African Republic swarmed over the wreckage of a crashed plane, hacking off metal, looting a cargo of onions and hampering efforts to free a trapped victim.

The cargo plane crashed into the poor suburb of Guitangola in western Bangui on Thursday, killing 23 passengers and crew, injuring two other people from the plane and destroying several mud-brick houses.

It is still not clear whether anyone on the ground was killed or injured.

"I heard there was a crash and I came to have a look," said a young boy who lives nearby. "People were climbing trees to see and others were taking away bits of the plane as souvenirs."

The cause of the crash is not known. It happened in clear weather as the plane neared the Bangui airport, where it had planned to make an emergency landing.

Authorities say the plane, operating under the license of Prestige Airlines, had been returning from N'Djamena, Chad, to its base in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, when it ran into technical problems and decided to try for an emergency landing.

The plane exploded on impact, breaking into pieces spreading bodies, cargo and huge pieces of wreckage over a wide, muddy area.

As darkness fell, hundreds of people still roamed the muddy site gathering the plane's cargo of onions which had been strewn around the area and neighboring marshland by the crash.

"We have nothing to eat, so we decided to come here to gather these onions," said one woman, her hands full.

Crowds of young men hacked away at the wrecked fuselage with axes, breaking off pieces of metal and other parts of the plane.

Fighting broke out at times over pieces of fuselage, and tension mounted as the crowds of people obstructed a small mobile crane sent to recover the wreckage.

Central African Republic, a former French colony, is one of the world's poorest nations.

Rescue workers at one point said one person who might have survived the crash was still trapped in the plane's cockpit, but they had been unable to free them because they did not have specialist equipment and because of the crowds stripping the wreckage.

"I was standing outside my house when I saw the plane crash to the ground. Then it bounced and landed again," said Antoine Folindogo, an unemployed young man who lives nearby. "There was a really loud bang and people came out of their houses to see what had happened."

Soldiers say the houses flattened by the crash were empty when the plane came down, but others say people were in the homes and may have been killed.

Didier Noel Katenze, who lived in one of the houses crushed in the crash, said he had not seen or heard from relatives he had left at the house on Thursday morning.

"I left four children at the house with a female relative. When I heard I came straight back, but I don't know where they are," said Katenze, adding that he hoped the fuselage could soon be moved to allow him to search the remains of his home.

Social affairs minister, Francoise Ndoma Ibrahim, said she understood several people had been killed on the ground, but the details were sketchy.

"There may have been more deaths on the ground, as this is an area where children play," she added.