Bonn - A German military plane with 24 passengers aboard is presumed to have crashed while on a flight to South Africa and may have collided with a US military aircraft carrying nine people, the German Defence Ministry said yesterday.
"It cannot be ruled out that the missing [German] plane possibly collided with an American military aircraft and crashed," a ministry spokesman said. The German aircraft was identified as a Soviet-built Tupolev TU-154 jet made in 1989.
The ministry said it had received confirmation from the United States military that one of its planes was missing in the southern African region were the German aircraft was believed to have crashed.
The German Defence Minister, Mr Volker Ruehe, had earlier told a news conference it was thought likely the German aircraft had crashed in the sea some 1,500 km (950 miles) west of Angola. "We can only assume that the plane has crashed and that all 24 passengers on board are dead," he said.
On board were 12 marine soldiers, 10 crew members and the wives of two crew members, the ministry said.
In a US statement forwarded to Reuters by the German defence ministry, the US Air Mobility Command in Illinois said there were nine crew members on board its missing C-141 cargo aircraft.