Missing Algeria flight ‘crashes’ with 116 on board

Algiers. An Air Algerie plane that went missing early Thursday with 116 people on board has crashed, reports Reuters.

The news agency quotes an anonymous official from within Algeria’s civil aviation authority, who said he “can confirm that [the plane] has crashed.”

Flight AH 5017 lost radar contact 50 minutes after takeoff from Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, reports CNN. It was due to arrive at Algiers' Houari Boumediene Airport about four hours later.

51 French citizens and 26 from Burkina Faso were among the 116 passengers on the plane which dropped off the radar as it flew over northern Mali, according to an AFP report.

An official source in Lebanon told AFP at least 20 of its nationals were also on the flight, including three couples with 10 children.

Aviation sources told AFP the aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 leased from Spanish company Swiftair.

Apart from seven Algerians, nationals from Canada, Ukraine and Luxembourg were also on board, according to Air Algerie.

The Telegraph reports that America’s Federal Aviation Administration “had explicity warned civil aircraft” to avoid Malian airspace because of “insurgent activity.”

The FAA’s Notice to Airmen, which is posted on The Telegraph website, warns of risk to operators flying over Mali from “small-arms, rocket-propelled grenades, rockets and mortars, anti-aircraft fire” and “man-portable air defense systems.”

Its six-member crew were all Spanish, said Spain's airline pilots' union Sepla, while Swiftair confirmed the aircraft had gone missing less than an hour after takeoff from Ouagadougou.

France's Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said that top civil aviation officials were holding an emergency meeting and a crisis cell had been set up.

"The plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500 kilometres (300 miles) from the Algerian border. Several nationalities are among the victims," Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal was cited as saying.

In neighbouring Mali, amid reports of heavy storms in the region, the prime minister's office also said contact was lost around Gao over the country's restive north.

Northern Mali was seized by jihadist groups for several months in 2012 and the region has remained unstable despite the Islamists being driven out in a French-led offensive.

Despite international military intervention still under way, the situation remains unstable in northern Mali, which was seized by jihadist groups for several months in 2012.

On July 17, the Bamako government and armed groups from northern Mali launched tough talks in Algiers aimed at securing an elusive peace deal, and with parts of the country still mired in conflict.

"The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route," an airline source said.

"Contact was lost after the change of course."

The carrier, in a statement carried by national news agency APS, said it initiated an "emergency plan" in the search for flight AH 5017, which flies the four-hour passenger route four times a week.