DRC: More than 120 passengers were sucked out of a transport plane to their deaths when its massive rear cargo door burst open at 33,000 feet over the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The aircraft was carrying up to 200 policemen and their families across war torn Congo, formerly Zaire, on Thursday night.
Airport officials in the capital of the central African nation, Kinshasa, said 129 passengers were sucked out when the rear door, which doubles as a ramp, of the Russian-built Ilyushin 76 burst away from the jet. "The door opened after the hydraulic system failed," said a Congolese official.
Kaki Bin Kraut, a Congolese government spokesman, would only confirm that seven people had been killed after being "ejected from the plane" at an altitude of 33,000 feet near the southern city of Mbuji-Mayi.
Officials were investigating the possibility of other casualties, he added. But officials at Kinshasa international airport insisted 129 people were dead.
After the accident occurred - 45 minutes into the flight - the pilots, Russian or Ukrainian, managed to turn back and land the crippled plane in the capital, said Defence Minister Irung Awan.
Nine survivors were being treated for minor injuries and psychological trauma at Kinshasa General Hospital, said Kabamba Mbwebwe, chief doctor at the hospital's emergency ward. "They were traumatised and spoke of their baggage flying everywhere," he said.
The plane, a four-engined Ilyushin 76 jet, had been chartered to transport Congolese police and their families from Kinshasa to the south-eastern town of Lubumbashi, a diamond centre.
It was not immediately known why the door came open. Weather conditions during the flight were believed to have been normal.
The aircraft, emblazoned with Ukrainian Cargo Airlines on its fuselage, was parked on a runway at Kinshasa's airport yesterday with its rear cargo door missing.
Nearly all the territory between Kinshasa in the west and Lubumbashi is held by government forces and there has been no fighting reported there recently.
Congo's four year conflict has led to more than 2.5 million deaths, aid groups estimate, mostly from strife-related hunger or illness. The Ilyushin 76 is a medium- to long-range transport jet first flown in 1971. The plane has had a chequered safety record, including at least 45 accidents that resulted in some 393 deaths. - (AP)