At least 257 people have been killed after a military plane crashed near the Boufarik airbase outside the Algerian capital, Algiers.
The Algerian plane went down in a field near the Boufarik military base, which is is 20 miles from the capital, Algiers, and close to the Mediterranean Sea.
Algeria’s defense 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 bodies were taken to an army hospital in the town of Ain Naadja for identification, the ministry said.The plane, an Ilyushin Il-76, mostly carried soldiers when it went down shortly after takeoff on Wednesday morning.
Ennahar TV quoted an Algerian ruling party official as saying that 26 people onboard were members of the Polisario Front, a separatist movement in West Sahara – a territory also claimed by Morocco.Algerie24, a local news website, said the plane was heading to the western Algerian city of Bechar.
The Il-76 aircraft model, widely used for both commercial freight and military, has been in production since 1970s and has a good safety record.
In 2014, a Malaysia Airlines jetliner was shot down over war-ravaged eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 aboard. It was the first crash of an Algerian military plane since February 2014, when a U.S.-built C-130 Hercules turboprop slammed into a mountain in Algeria, killing at least 76 people.
Images also showed dozens of bodies in numbered bags lined up on the ground, as paramedics and firefighters worked at the crash site, while cranes began moving some of the debris.
