DRC minister sacked as plane crash victims rise to 50
KINSHASA (AFP) — The Democratic Republic of Congo's transport minister was sacked Friday as the death toll from the crash of a Soviet-era cargo plane in a crowded district of Kinshasa rose to 50.
An earlier toll of 37 rose with the discovery of new bodies at the crash site and as a small boy and girl died in hospital, according to Serge Mulumba, a senior official in the DRC's humanitarian affairs ministry.
The toll could rise further, he warned, due to a large number of seriously burned people who had been admitted to hospital. Around 30 people were reported injured in the crash.
Meanwhile, the government met and approved the sacking of transport minister Remy Henry Kuseyo, due to "his inability to reform the aviation sector," a spokesman for President Joseph Kabila told AFP.
The Antonov 26 aircraft that came down three minutes after take off and ploughed through several homes before exploding in flames is typical of the elderly and ill-maintained air fleet in the DRC. Among dozens of accidents, one in 1996 killed more than 300 people in central Kinshasa.
Thursday's incident was the fourth fatal crash since June.
Kuseyo last March took on the task of reforming a sector where private airlines routinely bend regulations, and airports and landing strips are ill-equipped.
Mulumba said earlier that a new fire broke out in the night, hampering the work of Red Cross medical teams.
By Friday afternoon the known death toll was 22 on the plane, including two crew, and 28 residents of the working class area near the airport.
The plane belonged to Africa One, a private Congolese company, and was headed for Tshikapa, 650 kilometres (400 miles) away in the central province of Kasai-Occidental.
The charity Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) said it had given medication and bandages to help out at two of the hospitals that took in injured people, including severe burn cases.
"From where I was, I heard an explosion. When I walked outside my door, I saw a huge cloud, then the fire. Nobody could go near. We all fled," said Gaby, who lives in the area where a number of homes were destroyed in the crash.
The DR Congo, formerly known as Zaire, acquired most of its current fleet of planes while under a Western embargo. The aircraft often fly unlicensed or with deliberately incorrect passenger and cargo manifests.
Kabila's office on Friday agreed to a request from the humanitarian affairs ministry for an emergency fund to help the injured, rehouse families and "give dignified funerals" to the dead, once an inventory is taken, Mulumba said.
Such moves were unlikely, however, to deflect media anger over the state of the DRC's aviation industry.
Kuseyo in March gave about 50 airlines three months to comply with safety regulations and went on to ban all Antonov flights in September.
But one newspaper on Friday published copies of letters that appeared to show he was under strong pressure to rescind the order.
For Lisette, a 31-year-old nurse who comes from a neighbouring area, "the airplanes continue to land on the roofs of our homes while the government appears unconcerned towards the airlines who want to fly those coffins."
Africa One is on an EU list of airlines banned in Europe because of safety concerns. Only one of more than 50 companies in the central African nation, the privately owned Hewa Bora Airways, is exempted from that blacklist.
