KINSHASA, May 9: Around 160 passengers hurtled to their deaths when a door fell off a Russian-built aircraft in a freak mid-air accident over Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) on Thursday night.
The Ilyushin 76 plane — a four-engined jet which began service in the Soviet era in 1971 — had been flying from the capital Kinshasa to the southeastern city of Lubumbashi when the accident occurred.
Military sources and witnesses said up to 160 people were killed after being sucked out 2,200 metres above the ground, while 40 others survived.
However, a minister said the air force had informed him that just seven people had died.
Among those aboard were more than 100 officials of the police rapid intervention force and members of their families, a policeman who survived the disaster said from his hospital bed in Kinshasa.
“Thirty-five minutes after takeoff, we heard a loud noise inside the plane, like hissing, and then the ramp fell off. The aircraft swung from side to side and that’s when the people fell out,” he said.
Military officials said 40 people survived the disaster. The crew, reported by diplomatic sources in Moscow to be Ukrainian, managed to turn the aircraft round and fly back to the capital.
“Only the people who had the reflex to reach for ropes on the walls were able to stay inside,” the policeman added.
Communications Minister Kikaya Bin Karubi told CNN on Friday that he had been informed by air force officials that seven people were sucked out of the plane, but witnesses said there were many clandestine passengers.
“In the middle of the flight, the back door of the Ilyushin 76 burst open, sucking out as many as seven people. That’s what the air force is telling us. Seven people were sucked out,” the minister said.
Another of the eight survivors in Kinshasa’s Mama Yamo hospital said of the large number of clandestine passengers on the flight — a frequent practice in African countries with poor transport infrastructure.
The Democratic Republic of Congo is emerging from four years of ravaging war which at its height drew in half a dozen foreign armies and is estimated directly and indirectly to have killed some three million people. Many of the roads are in ruins.
DRC officials said that an enquiry would be carried out by the army since the Kasai provinces, over which the accident happened, are mining areas accessible only to people with special passes from the government.
The IL-76, a long-range military transport, cargo and fire-fighting plane, can be fitted, as in this case, with a large rear bay door running for roughly the length of the tail along the belly of the fuselage.
The aircraft had been chartered for the flight by the DRC military.
The aircraft belongs to Ukraine’s defence ministry. —AFP