Mozambican plane wreck found
Print Edition
Police yesterday found the burned wreckage of a missing Mozambican Airlines plane in a remote area in northeastern Namibia, saying none of the 33 people from several countries aboard had survived the crash.
“My team on the ground have found the wreckage. No survivors. The plane is totally burned,” said Willie Bampton, a regional police coordinator in the Kavango region.
The plane, en route from Mozambique to Angola, went down in remote terrain in the Bwabwata National Park, where Namibia turns into a narrow strip of land sandwiched between Botswana and Angola.
In Maputo, Mozambican Airlines, LAM, had issued a statement revising the passenger list down to 27, rather than the 28 earlier reported, along with the six crew members.
The statement said the 33 included 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, one French national, one Brazilian and one Chinese.
The Chinese Embassy in Mozambique earlier confirmed that one of its nationals was onboard.
LAM flight TM470 took off from Maputo at 0926 GMT on Friday and had been due to land in the capital Luanda at 1310 GMT, but never arrived. Last contact with the place came around 1130 GMT when it was over north Namibia.
Namibia police sent a search team to the area after Botswana officials alerted them of a plane crash there.
“Botswana officials informed us that they saw smoke in the air and they thought the crash happened in their country, but when they came to the border they realized that it was in Namibia,” Bampton said.
Villagers in the area told police they had heard explosions.
Namibian authorities have not yet said anything about the possible cause of the crash and the country’s cabinet was holding an emergency meeting over the accident yesterday.
The search for the plane was hampered both by the rough terrain and torrential rains pounding the area where the plane, a Brazilian-made Embraer 190, went missing on Friday, Bampton said.
“There are no proper roads, you have to go through the bush, slowly and it’s making our job difficult,” he revealed.
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