ALGERIA: All but one of the 103 people aboard an Air Algerie passenger plane died when it crashed during take-off from the Sahara desert town of Tamanrasset in southern Algeria yesterday afternoon, the state media reported.
Six foreigners, believed to be French nationals, were among those killed, Algerian national radio reported.
The sole survivor, a young man who was thought to have been a member of the six-person crew, was critically injured in the crash, which occurred 1,900 kilometres south of the coastal capital, Algiers, a local radio correspondent said.
An Air Algerie official said that the crash appeared to have been caused by a technical fault on the Boeing 737-200 jet. The plane had been bound for Algiers on a scheduled domestic flight. The dead were 97 passengers and five crew members, the official told Algerian national radio.
The plane had been carrying a pilot, co-pilot and four cabin crew.
A witness told the radio that one of the aircraft's engines appeared to catch fire as it was accelerating down the runway ahead of take-off.
The plane veered off its path and crashed about 600 metres further on, according to several witnesses.
Firemen, assisted by customs officers, policemen, soldiers and volunteers, joined in a rescue operation and took some of the casualties to hospital, the local radio correspondent said.
The Algerian interior minister, Mr Yazid Zehouni, and the transport minister, Mr Abdelmalek Sellal, were reported to have left Algiers for Tamanrasset last night.
The plane had been due to stop over in Ghardaia in the northern desert on the far side of the Atlas mountains from Algiers before flying on to the capital.
An Air Algerie official said that 59 of the passengers had been going to Ghardaia, 600 kilometres from Algiers, and 38 to the capital.
A technical committee has been asked to begin an investigation into the crash, which was the worst in Algerian aviation history.
A crisis team has been set up at Algiers Airport to keep the families of those who had been aboard the plane informed, the Algerian APS news agency reported.
In January, an unarmed man said to have been on drugs, attempted to hijack an Algerian airliner during a domestic flight, but he was overpowered by the crew.
Tamanrasset is in territory largely unaffected by the Islamic insurgency which has gripped mainly northern Algeria since 1992, at a cost of an estimated 150,000 lives.
Lying in the Hoggar mountains, it is also the largest city in the central Sahara and has long been a major centre of trade in the region and for the Tuareg nomad tribes of the desert. The area, noted for its prehistoric cave paintings, attracts tourists mainly from France and Germany.