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A military plane has crashed soon after take-off in a farm field in northern Algeria, killing 257 people, according to Algeria's Defence Ministry.
Key points:
- 257 people died in the crash
- 26 were members of an Algerian-backed military group fighting for Western Sahara independence from Morocco
- In 2014, an Algerian military plane crashed killing 77
The Defence Ministry said those killed included 247 passengers and 10 crew. The cause of the crash was unclear and an investigation has been opened.
Television footage showed crowds gathering around the smoking and flaming wreckage near Boufarik airport southwest of Algiers.
A line of white body bags could be seen on the ground next to what media said was a Russian Ilyushin transport plane as ambulances and Red Crescent vehicles arrived at the crash site.
Algerian authorities did not mention whether there were any survivors but one witness reported seeing some people jump out of the aircraft before it crashed at 7:50am on Wednesday local time.
Several witnesses told Algerian TV network Ennahar they saw flames coming out of one of the planes' engines just before it took off.
One farmer said some passengers jumped out of the aircraft before the accident.
"The plane started to rise before falling," an unidentified man lying on what seemed to be a hospital bed told Ennahar TV.
"The plane crashed on its wing first and caught fire."
The victims' bodies have been transported to the Algerian army's central hospital for identification.
Algerian-backed militants onboard
Mohammed Achour, chief spokesman for the civil protection agency, said the plane was carrying soldiers.
The flight had just taken off from Boufarik, about 30 kilometres south-west of the capital Algiers, for a military base in Bechar in southwest Algeria, Mr Achour said.
The Soviet-designed Il-76 military transport plane crashed in an agricultural zone with no residents, Mr Achour said. It was scheduled to make a layover in Tindouf in southern Algeria, home to many refugees from the neighbouring Western Sahara, a disputed territory annexed by Morocco.
A member of Algeria's ruling FLN party told the private Ennahar TV station the dead included 26 members of Polisario, an Algerian-backed group fighting for the independence of neighbouring Western Sahara — a territory also claimed by Morocco in a long-running dispute.
UN attempts to broker a settlement have failed for years in the vast desert area, which has been contested since 1975 when Spanish colonial powers left.
Morocco claimed the territory while Polisario established its self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic there.
Algeria's Defence Ministry issued a statement expressing condolences to families of the victims.
The Algerian Prime Minister's office said lawmakers and officials observed a minute of silence as a tribute to the victims.
In February 2014, an Algerian Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules crashed in a mountainous area in eastern Algeria killing 77 passengers and leaving one survivor.
The previous deadliest crash on Algerian soil occurred in 2003, when 102 people were killed after a civilian airliner crashed at the end of the runway in Tamanrasset. There was a single survivor in that crash.
AP/Reuters
Topics: disasters-and-accidents, air-and-space, defence-forces, algeria
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