Postby AbdiWahab252 » Fri Mar 23, 2007 12:13 pm
Plane crashes in Somali capital
map of Somalia
A plane has crashed shortly after taking off from the main airport in the Somali capital, Mogadishu.
Local witnesses said they saw the plane plunge to the ground in flames. The cause of the crash was not known.
Some reports said a missile hit the plane but this is not confirmed. It crashed in the northern suburbs, where there was no fighting on Friday.
A spokesman for Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia, who control the airport, said 11 people were on board.
"It's too early to say if it [the plane] was hit by a missile or not. We are checking," Capt Paddy Ankunda told Reuters news agency.
I saw the plane on fire... One of the wings exploded in the air... When it hit the ground, another explosion occurred
Hassan Mahamud Jama, eyewitness
The spokesman said that possibly nationals of Russia or Belarus were on the plane.
An airport official and a Somali government source were quoted as saying that the plane had carried engineers and equipment to repair another aircraft at Mogadishu's airport.
They said they believed it was a Russian-made Ilyushin-76 cargo plane.
Local witnesses said they saw a plane on fire and later heard an explosion.
Mogadishu's international airport is located in the heart of the city.
'Large explosions'
Earlier, clan elders from the Hawiye clan which dominates Mogadishu said they had agreed a truce with the Ethiopian army, which helped install the government in they city last December.
However, some shooting continued in the south of the city.
One local resident said he had heard a number of large explosions and machine gunfire.
A government official, who did not want to be identified, told the BBC he had heard that Ethiopian tanks had been firing on buildings occupied by Islamist insurgents.
More than 20 people have died in clashes between insurgents and Ethiopia-backed government forces during two days of clashes - the heaviest fighting in the city this year.
Earlier this month, some 1,200 Ugandan peacekeepers arrived in the city to replace the Ethiopians who want to pull out.
Somalia has not had an effective national government since 1991.
