Lira, Uganda:
A United Nations plane crashed as it was landing in Kinshasa, Congo, on Monday, killing 32 of the 33 people aboard, United Nations officials said.
The plane, traveling from the city of Kisangani on the Congo river, was carrying 29 passengers and four crew members, a United Nations official said. The passengers included peacekeepers, United Nations officials, humanitarian workers and electoral assistants, the official said.
A United Nations official told Reuters that the plane was trying to land in rainy, windy weather, and that it "landed heavily, broke into two and caught fire."
The United Nations has not yet disclosed the identity of the sole survivor, and officials said the cause of the crash was not yet known.
Another United Nations official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called death toll "painfully high," and said that pictures from the airport showed the plane had been "decimated."
Airplanes crash frequently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, often because of poor maintenance.
Congolese airlines are generally prohibited from flying to Europe, and in a country with only 1,736 miles of paved road (Algeria, slightly larger and in the Sahara Desert, has over 47,000 miles of paved road, according to the C.I.A. Factbook) United Nations flights have become one of the better means of transportation.
The United Nations conducts hundreds of flights a week in Congo, and the flight from Kisangani to Kinshasa, with continuation to the volatile east, is a premier route using some of the most modern aircraft.
Even so, the peacekeeping mission often relies on the generosity of donor governments and secondhand aircraft. Reuters reported that the Bombardier CRJ-200 jet was operated by the Georgian airline Airzena Georgian Airways, and that the crew was Georgian.
The plane, traveling from the city of Kisangani on the Congo river, was carrying 29 passengers and four crew members, a United Nations official said. The passengers included peacekeepers, United Nations officials, humanitarian workers and electoral assistants, the official said.
A United Nations official told Reuters that the plane was trying to land in rainy, windy weather, and that it "landed heavily, broke into two and caught fire."
The United Nations has not yet disclosed the identity of the sole survivor, and officials said the cause of the crash was not yet known.
Another United Nations official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, called death toll "painfully high," and said that pictures from the airport showed the plane had been "decimated."
Airplanes crash frequently in the Democratic Republic of Congo, often because of poor maintenance.
Congolese airlines are generally prohibited from flying to Europe, and in a country with only 1,736 miles of paved road (Algeria, slightly larger and in the Sahara Desert, has over 47,000 miles of paved road, according to the C.I.A. Factbook) United Nations flights have become one of the better means of transportation.
The United Nations conducts hundreds of flights a week in Congo, and the flight from Kisangani to Kinshasa, with continuation to the volatile east, is a premier route using some of the most modern aircraft.
Even so, the peacekeeping mission often relies on the generosity of donor governments and secondhand aircraft. Reuters reported that the Bombardier CRJ-200 jet was operated by the Georgian airline Airzena Georgian Airways, and that the crew was Georgian.
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