Burkina Faso - Pesawat Air Algerie yang hilang awal semalam dengan 116 orang di dalamnya ditemui terhempas di Mali, berhampiran sempadan Burkina Faso.
Perkara itu dilaporkan penyelaras unit krisis di Ouagadougou.
"Kami sudah menemui pesawat Algeria. Bangkainya sudah di kenal pasti lokasinya... 50 kilometer di utara sempadan Burkina Faso di Wilayah Gossi, Mali," kata Jeneral Gilbert Diendiere dari Tentera Burkina Faso, lapor AFP.
Agensi berita Reuters melaporkan tiada yang terselamat di dalam nahas berkenaan.
Semalam pesawat penumpang itu dilaporkan terputus hubungan dengan syarikat penerbangan 50 minit selepas ia berlepas.
Seorang pegawai syarikat penerbangan itu berkata, separuh daripada jumlah penumpang merupakan warga Perancis.
Seorang wakil Air Algerie di Burkina Faso, Kara Terki pada sidang media berkata, kesemua penumpang yang menaiki pesawat itu dalam penerbangan transit sama ada ke Eropah, Timur Tengah atau Kanada.
Beliau berkata, senarai penumpang termasuk 50 warga Perancis, Burkinabe (24), Lebanon (8), Algeria (4), Luxembourg (2), Belgium (1), Nigeria (1), Ukraine (1) dan Romania (1).
Berita lanjut : http://greenboc.blogspot.com/Air Algerie plane wreckage found in northern Mali desert
The wreckage of a missing Air Algerie flight has been found in Mali's north, with reports suggesting there are no survivors.
The flight crashed en route from Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso to Algiers with 116 people on board.
Mali's president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita confirmed the sighting of the wreckage.
"I have just been informed that the wreckage has been found between Aguelhoc and Kidal," Mr Keita said during a meeting of political, religious and civil society leaders in Bamako.
An Air Algerie representative in Burkina Faso, Kara Terki, told a news conference all the passengers on the plane were in transit, either for Europe, the Middle East or Canada.
The passenger list included 51 French, 27 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, five Canadians, four Germans, two from Luxembourg, one Cameroonian, one Belgian, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Swiss, one Nigerian and one Malian, according to authorities in Burkina Faso.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry says its embassy in Abidjan estimates that at least 20 Lebanese citizens were on the flight, including some possibly with dual nationality.
The six crew were from Spain, a spokeswoman for SEPLA, Spain's pilots union said.
Regional aviation officials say they lost contact with flight AH5017 at about 0155 GMT (noon AEST) on Thursday, less than an hour after takeoff, following a request by the pilot to change course due to bad weather.
Malian state television said the wreckage of the flight was discovered between the town of Gossi and the Burkina Faso border.
General Gilbert Diendere, a member of the crisis unit in Burkina Faso, says his team of investigators has inspected the wreckage near the village of Boulikessi, 50 kilometres from the border.
"This team has confirmed that it has seen the remains of the plane, totally burned out and scattered on the ground," General Diendere told local television, adding the remains of dead bodies had also been discovered.
"Sadly, the team saw no-one on site. It saw no survivors."
Herders 'saw the plane fall'
A local official in Gossi said the crash had been witnessed by a group of herders near the village of Hamni-Ganda, and word was passed to authorities in Burkina Faso.
"The herders were in the bush and saw the plane fall," Louis Berthaud, a community counsellor said.
"It must have been a storm and it was struck by lightning.
"They said it was on fire as it fell, before it crashed."
French president Francois Hollande had earlier cancelled a planned visit to overseas territories and said France - which has about 1,700 troops stationed in Mali - would use all military means to locate the aircraft.
"We cannot identify the causes of what happened," he said.
Much of northern Mali lies in the hands of Tuareg separatist rebels, who rose up against the government in early 2012, triggering an Islamist revolt that briefly seized control of northern Mali. A French-led international operation in early 2013 broke the Islamists control over northern Mali.
Jet had relatively clean record
The MD-83 is part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 family of twin-engine jets that entered service in 1980. A total of 265 of the MD-83 model were delivered before McDonnell Douglas, by then part of Boeing, halted production in 1999.
There are 187 MD-83s still in operation, of which 80 per cent are flown in the United States, according to a database held by British-based Flightglobal.
Swiftair, the private Spanish company that owns the aircraft, has a relatively clean safety record, with five accidents since 1977, two of which caused a total of eight deaths, according to the Washington-based Flight Safety Foundation.
Air Algerie's last major accident was in 2003 when one of its planes crashed shortly after takeoff from the southern city of Tamanrasset, killing 102 people.
In February, 77 people died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain in eastern Algeria.
-Reuters
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