Goma (Congo): A Congolese jetliner carrying around 85 people failed to take off today from an airport in this eastern town, crashing at high speed into a busy market neighbourhood at the end of the runway, officials said.

Reports of casualty figures varied widely. While officials said they had no information on casualties among residents of the area, an airline official said 60 people inside the plane had survived, but local officials said dozens of bodies were pulled from the wreckage, though it was unclear if they had been passengers or not. The DC-9 plane was operated by the private Congolese company, Hewa Bora, and was headed to the central city of Kisangani, then the capital, Kinshasa. Hewa Bora's Dirk Cramers said 53 passengers and seven crew were taken from the site to local hospitals.

Employees at the aid agency World Vision, which has an office less than one kilometre from the crash site, said the plane "failed to leave the ground," plowing instead "through wooden houses and shops in the highly populated Birere market". The plane appeared to have been "totally flattened" by the impact, said Rachel Wolff, a US-based spokeswoman for the international aid organization who has been in contact with her colleagues in Congo.

A former pilot who survived the crash, Dunia Sindani, gave a similar account in an interview broadcast over a local UN radio station. The plane suffered a problem in one of its wheels possibly a flat tyre and did not gain the strength to lift off, Sindani said.

Earlier, conflicting accounts said the plane crashed just after takeoff. Congo has experienced more fatal crashes than any other African country since 1945,according to the Aviation Safety Network.

Source : PTI