DR Congo plane crash kills 38
KINSHASA (AFP) — A Soviet-era cargo plane crashed in a residential area of Kinshasa on Thursday, killing 23 people on board and 15 on the ground as it ploughed into houses and exploded in a fireball.
"This plane had on board, as well as the three crew members, 20 passengers who all died," the ministry of humanitarian affairs said in a statement.
Fifteen were killed on the ground and 30 injured when the Antonov 26 crashed in the heavily-populated neighbourhood of Kimbaseke on the eastern outskirts of Kinshasa, one of the largest cities in Africa.
The aircraft "messed up its takeoff" for unknown reasons at the nearby international airport of Kinshasa-Ndjili and crashed around 0940 GMT, Serge Mulumba, a senior official at the ministry, told AFP.
The dead included two children aged seven and eight. The injured included a mother and baby as well as at least nine other children, the ministry said. A mechanic managed to escape from the wreckage but later died of his injuries.
Witnesses said the twin-engined plane burst into flames once it crashed, destroying around a dozen houses.
"There were several dead people in the houses," Information Minister Toussaint Tshilombo Send told AFP.
"The aircraft is completely burned out," a senior police officer said at the scene.
The plane belonged to a private Congolese company on an EU safety blacklist and was headed for Tshikapa, 650 kilometres (400 miles) to the east in the central province of Kasai-Occidental.
The disaster was the fourth deadly plane accident since June in the DRC, which has a long record of such crashes.
The RVA national aviation authority sent firefighters to help poorly equipped city firemen tackle the blaze.
Rescue workers and local Red Cross teams went in to try to find and help survivors and start the grim task of pulling bodies out of the collapsed ruins of homes.
In 1996, a larger Antonov 32 hit a market in central Kinshasa, killing more than 300, while in May 2003 up to 200 people died on a flight between the capital and Lubumbashi in the southeast.
The Antonov's crew had informed airport authorities that five crew and 14 passengers were on board, but an RVA official told AFP it was common practice to declare an incorrect passenger manifest in order to avoid taxes.
The crew were Russians, according to a Russian embassy official in Kinshasa, Alexander Turtsinovitch, contacted by telephone by the ITAR-TASS news agency in Moscow, but he did not know how many there were.
The Antonov 26, a twin-propeller transport aircraft whose design dates back to the 1960s, was made in Ukraine and is typical of the ageing fleet that has become an essential part of the transport infrastructure in the DR Congo.
Africa One is on an EU list of airlines banned in Europe because of safety concerns. Only one of more than 50 companies in the central African nation, the privately owned Hewa Bora Airways, is exempted from that blacklist.
Last month, an Antonov 12 cargo aircraft crashed and exploded while landing at Goma's airport. In August, 13 people died in Kongolo in another Antonov disaster. After a previous accident in June, the transport ministry grounded two airlines within the DRC itself.
Though perilous because of poor maintenance, lack of infrastructure and the sheer age of much of the fleet, air transport is the most used way to get around the nation that stretches from Africa's western Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes in the centre.
The DRC has only just started to emerge from the ravages of its 1998-2003 rebel war that drew in the armies of more than half a dozen other African nations, following decades of misrule.
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Antonow, Typ An-26

 Im Osten der kongolesischen Hauptstadt Kinshasa ist gestern ein Flugzeug auf ein Wohngebiet gestürzt. Dabei handelte es sich um eine Frachtmaschine vom Typ Antonow-26 der Fluggesellschaft „Africa One“. Sie war auf dem Weg vom Flughafen Kinshasa nach Tshikapa (Provinz Ost-Kasai). 

Nach ersten Berichten hat es nach dem Aufschlag auf einem Marktplatz mindestens fünf Tote gegeben. Nach Angaben des Informationsministers Toussaint Tshilombo Send war gestern nachmittag noch nicht bekannt, wie viele Opfer es am Boden gegeben habe. Zur Zahl der toten Passagiere und Besatzungsmitglieder gibt es unterschiedliche Angaben. Offiziellen Angaben zufolge starben alle Insassen des Transportflugzeugs. Laut MONUC-Angaben (ein friedenssichernder Einsatz von UN-Truppen der Demokratischen Republik Kongo) sollen jedoch zwei Insassen, ein Mechaniker und eine Stewardess, den Absturz überlebt haben; 25 Personen seien getötet worden. Die Monuc beruft sich dabei auf einen örtlichen Behördenvertreter. Ein Mitarbeiter der russischen Botschaft im Kongo gab an, die Besatzung der Maschine habe aus Russland gestammt.

Überblickskarte: Lage der DR Kongo

Das Unglück soll sich unmittelbar nach dem Start der Maschine ereignet haben. Die Maschine stürzte dann in das im Osten gelegene Armenviertel „Masina“ und brannte danach völlig aus. Bei der Bruchlandung ist laut Augenzeugen eine „Schneise der Zerstörung“ entstanden; viele Häuser seien zerstört worden oder stünden in Flammen. 

„Africa One“ war von der Europäischen Union bereits vor dem Vorfall auf die Liste der unsicheren Fluggesellschaften gesetzt worden. Die Propellermaschine vom Typ Antonow 26 stammt aus den 60-er Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts. Mit Ausnahme von Hewa Bora Airways, bei der nur ein Flugzeug (9Q-CHC (Seriennr. 193H-1206)) des Typs Lockheed L-1011-385-3 TriStar 500 erlaubt ist, stehen wegen Sicherheitsbedenken alle privaten Fluggesellschaften des Landes auf der schwarzen Liste der EU und dürfen daher in Europa nicht landen.