Private Congo Aircraft Crashes After Take-off, All Aboard Perish

Goma, Congo (AHN) - All of the 83 passengers and crew of Hewa Bora, a private Congo airline, perished after the plane crashed shortly after it took off from the Goma airport Tuesday.

Antoine Ghonda, spokesman of the airline, told CNN the ill-fated DC-9 aircraft was bound for the central city Kisangani when the plane crashed into a neighborhood near the runway.

BBC, which had sketchy reports, cited unconfirmed information that several survivors were pulled from the aircraft's wreckage while firefighters tried to douse the blaze. BBC also gave a range of 60 to 100 people on board the Congolese plane, quoting United Nations and aviation officials.

Congo has one of the worst air safety records, although the number of recorded air crashes in 2007 vastly differed between CNN and BBC reports. BBC quoted a wire agency which said there were 8 crashes last year, while CNN cited data from the Aviation Safety Network, which quoted a higher 24 plane crashes.