More than 200 people killed in Algerian military plane crash
Firefighters and civil security officers work at the scene of a fatal military plane crash in Boufarik.
Photo: APAlgiers: Algeria's defence ministry says 257 people have died when a military plane carrying soldiers and their families crashed soon after take-off in a farm field in northern Algeria.
The ministry said in a statement that 247 passengers and 10 crew members were killed. It said most of the victims are soldiers and their relatives.
The victims' bodies have been transported to the Algerian army's central hospital in the town of Ain Naadja for identification, it added.
Television footage showed crowds gathering around the smoking and flaming wreckage near Boufarik airport, south-west 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.
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.
The plane was heading to Tindouf, an area on Algeria's border with Western Sahara, but crashed on the airport's perimeter, Algeria's defence ministry said.
Tindouf is home to thousands of refugees from the Western Sahara stand-off, many of them Polisario supporters.
Algerian emergency services attend the crash.
Photo: ALG24/APUN 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.
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.
AP, Reuters