JUBA // At least 36 people were killed on Wednesday when a plane crashed shortly after taking off from South Sudan’s capital Juba, rescue workers said.
Police and rescue workers pulled bodies of men, women and children out of the wreckage of the Russian-built Antonov An-12 cargo plane, which smashed into a farming community on an island on the White Nile river, seconds after taking off.
“So far 36 bodies have been collected and brought to hospitals,” South Sudan Red Cross official Majju Hillary said, adding that all those killed had been on board the airplane.
A police officer, however, told Reuters that at least 41 people died.
Police at the site said they did not know how many had been on board the plane when it crashed – nor if people may have been hit when it smashed into the island – and so were unable to give an official death toll. Two survivors were pulled out of the twisted metal hulk of the plane but one of them later died, with a young boy the only survivor, the Red Cross said, adding the number of dead may still rise.
“We can’t assess this is the final toll, as some debris is too heavy to be lifted and needs some heavy machinery,” Mr Hillary added.
The five-member Armenian crew were all killed, the Armenian embassy in Egypt said.
Cargo planes to remote parts of South Sudan often carry passengers as well as goods.
It is common for the security services to put family members on the cargo planes bound for the Paloich oil fields in Upper Nile state even if they are not on the manifest, according to Kenyi Galla, assistant operations manager for Combined Air Services, a company that operates chartered flights across South Sudan.
“Normally [this flight] used to carry 12 people, but the problem is they added more people,” he said. Russian television channel LifeNews quoted an unnamed source at the Russian aviation agency as saying that the plane appeared to have been overloaded.
The main fuselage of the plane ploughed into thick woodland, with debris scattered around the riverbank in a wide area, according to a witness.
Juba’s airport is the busiest in the war-torn country, which is the size of Spain and Portugal combined but with few tarred roads.
The airport hosts regular commercial flights, as well as a constant string of military aircraft and cargo planes delivering aid to remote regions cut off by road.
Civil war broke out in December 2013 when president Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that has split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic lines.
* Agencies
