 |
| 19 people were killed when a plane crashed into a lake in Tanzania |
LAKE VICTORIA: The death toll from a plane crash in Tanzania on Sunday has risen to 19, Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa said, as a Precision Air flight carrying dozens of passengers crashed into Lake Victoria near the northwestern city of Bukoba. After I fell.
"All Tanzanians are with you in mourning the 19 people who lost their lives in this crash," Majaliwa told a crowd after arriving at Bukoba Airport, where the flight from the financial capital Dar es Salaam was due to land. .
Regional authorities had earlier said that 26 survivors of the 43 people on board PW 494 had been evacuated to safety and taken to a lakeside city hospital.
But Precision Air, a publicly listed company that is Tanzania's largest private carrier, said in a statement that 24 people survived the crash, an airline official said, adding that two other patients were hospitalized. I was not riding.
The plane was an ATR 42-500, manufactured by Toulouse-based Franco-Italian firm ATR, and was carrying 39 passengers - including an infant - and four crew members, the company said.
Video footage broadcast on local media showed the plane sinking heavily as rescue workers, including fishermen, waded into the water to pull people to safety.
Emergency workers tried to pull the plane out of the water using ropes, while residents also tried to help with the help of cranes.
President Sama Salwa Hassan expressed his condolences to those affected by the accident, saying: "We pray to God to help us."
The disaster is considered to be the deadliest plane crash in the East African country's history.
'Heroic Efforts'
The U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam released a statement, "paying tribute to the heroic efforts of first responders, especially civilians who helped rescue the victims." The head of the African Union Commission, Moussa Faki Mahat, also expressed his condolences, as did Peter Matuki, secretary general of the regional East African Community bloc.
The accident comes five years after a plane belonging to the safari company Coastal Aviation crashed in northern Tanzania.
In March 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi crashed six minutes after takeoff in a field southeast of the Ethiopian capital, killing all 157 people on board.
The disaster, which came five months after a similar crash in Indonesia, triggered a 20-month global grounding of the Boeing 737 MAX model of the jet, before it returns to service in late 2020.
In 2007, a Kenya Airways flight from the Ivory Coast city of Abidjan to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, crashed into a swamp after takeoff, killing all 114 passengers.
