Kinshasa, April 05: Thirty-two people onboard a UN plane have been killed in a crash landing in the Democratic Republic of Congo’s Kinshasa airport.
The plane, a Fokker 100, smashed into pieces on Monday when it crash landed at Kinshasa airport. It undertook regular flights between Goma in North Kivu province to Kinshasa via the city of Kisangani in the northeast.
An airport source, who said she was 10 meters from the plane’s wreckage, was quoted by AFP as saying that there were 26 people dead and six seriously injured. The plane had 29 passengers and three crew on board.
Plane accidents are common in DR Congo, and all the country’s 50 aviation companies are blacklisted by the European Union and barred from its airspace.
The Monday crash was the first accident involving a plane of the UN mission in the country, known as Monusco, which was set up in 1999.
The UN has one of its biggest peace missions in the vast central African country, which is five times the size of France.
——–Agencies