(Bloomberg) — An Air Algerie MD-83 carrying 116 people crashed in the desolate Sahel region of north Africa as it approached Algier en route from Burkina Faso, marking the third major civil-aviation incident in a week.
Flight AH5017, which took off in the west African country shortly after midnight carrying 110 passengers and six Spanish crew, was scheduled to land at 5:10 a.m. local time, according to Swiftair, a charter company based in Spain. The jet crashed about three hours earlier, 80 kilometers (50 miles) from the town of Gossi, Mali, according to Burkinabe authorities.
"We are sending teams there to verify where the plane crashed," Gilbert Diendere, Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore's chief of staff for military affairs, said at a press conference today. "We have contacted the authorities of Mali."
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