The Air Algerie flight that went missing while traveling from Burkina Faso to Algiers has crashed, an Algerian official said on Thursday.
“I can confirm that it has crashed,” the official told Reuters.
“We have found the Algerian plane,the source said. The wreck has been located … 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of the Burkina Faso border” in the Malian region of Gossi.
The flight reportedly had 116 passengers on board.
He declined to provide any additional information on flight AH5017, such as the potential cause of the crash.
Flight AH5017 is a MD-83 that Air Algerie leased from Swiftair, a Spanish private airline company.
A source at Air Algerie saidthat the airline lost contact with the flight after it took a detour due to poor visibility. “The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route,” the source said. “Contact was lost after the change of course.”
All six of the flight’s crew members are Spanish. The passenger list includes 50 French nationals, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two individuals from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian, one Swiss, one Ukrainian and one Romanian, an Air Algerie spokesperson said in a press conference. But Lebanese officials claim that at least 10 Lebanese nationals were on board.