A cargo plane crashed in Sudan today shortly after taking off from Khartoum airport, killing four Russian crew members, a spokesman for the Civil Aviation Authority said. It is the fourth plane crash in Sudan in two months. "A cargo plane which is a Russian plane from the Ababeel cargo company crashed. On board were four crew members who are dead and two corpses have been recovered so far," spokesman Abdel Hafez Abdel Rahim told AFP.
"The four crew members were Russian, no one survived the crash," Abdel Rahim said. He said the plane crashed at around 7 am (0400 GMT), but added: "It’s too early to say what happened and what was the cause." "The whole plane blew up in a fireball as it lifted off," one witness waiting at the airport told AFP. He said the left wing appeared to drop as the plane took off and that it crashed in wasteland on the edge of Khartoum airport.
Firetrucks rushed to the scene to put out the smoking wreckage, the witness said. "Thank God it fell in an empty area. The buildings around the airport were not damaged," the head of Khartoum Police, Mohammed Najib Al Tayeb, told reporters at the airport. He said authorities would launch an investigation into the cause of the crash. "It is clear that the plane hit that electricity pole," said Yussuf Ibrahim, head of Khartoum airport, pointing to poles not far from the crater caused by the crash.The plane, which was headed to the southern Sudanese capital of Juba, is the second cargo plane to crash in Sudan in just a few days.
On Friday, a cargo plane crashed mid-flight after taking off from Khartoum, killing seven crew members, including one Armenian and four Ukranians. Sudan has a poor aviation record and the crash was the fourth fatal aviation accident in Africa’s biggest country since May. On June 10, a Sudan Airways Airbus carrying 214 people burst into flames after landing at Khartoum international airport, killing at least 30 people.
Airport authorities said an engine caught fire, spreading to the fuselage, while survivors said the weather at the time of the landing was poor, owing to a sandstorm followed by heavy showers. This week Sudan Airways was granted a one-month reprieve from the Civil Aviation Authority over its flight worthiness after an initial announcement that it had been grounded for not meeting international standards.
In May, south Sudan’s defence minister was killed in a plane crash along with at least 22 other people, most of them senior members of the southern former rebel leadership. In July 2003, 115 people were killed when a Sudan Airways Boeing 737 was destroyed in a ball of fire as it attempted to land at Port Sudan after apparently suffering an engine problem soon after takeoff.
