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Oum el Bouaghi – Search teams combed the wreckage of an Algerian military plane on Wednesday for clues to why it crashed in a mountainous region killing all but one of 78 people on board.
Algerians began three days of national mourning after the C-130 Hercules aircraft carrying 74 passengers — soldiers and their families — and four crew came down in bad weather on Tuesday in the northeast Oum El Bouaghi region.
One survivor was found, official sources said of Algeria’s worst aviation disaster in more than 10 years.
A special unit arrived at the crash site early on Wednesday, as search teams scoured the snowy and rugged area.
“Rescue reinforcements and sniffer dog teams have begun their search,” headed by the emergency service chief Mustapha Lahbiri, a source at the scene told AFP.
The male survivor, suffering from serious head injuries, was taken to the military hospital in the city of Constantine, where the plane had been headed, as were the bodies of the 77 dead. No more information about the survivor was available.
The last body was located at 02:00 GMT, the source said. “School notebooks and military duffle bags were also visible at the site of the crash,” he said.
Colonel Lahbiri said the black box flight recorder had not yet been found, contradicting earlier reports by Algerian media that rescue teams had located one of two black boxes. — AFP
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