The 11-person crew of a cargo plane that was shot down by a missile during takeoff died, officials said Saturday.
The downing of the plane, which on Friday delivered equipment for Ugandan peacekeepers in Mogadishu, came at the end of a particularly violent week in the Somali capital. Dozens of people, most of them civilians, were killed in fighting.
Ten of the crew died in Friday’s crash. Rescuers found a wounded crew member and took him to a Mogadishu hospital where he died while being treated, said Hussein Mohamed Mohamud, spokesman for Somalia’s president.
All crew members were either Ukrainian or Belarussian, Mohamud said on Saturday, adding that their bodies will be flown back to their countries later in the day.
On Friday, Egi Azarian, acting head of Belarus-based Transaviaexport, confirmed that the company’s plane was shot down but would not give any details.
An airport worker, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, saw the attack on the Russian-built plane.
Another witness said he saw one of the plane’s wings fall into the Indian Ocean.
“Nobody knows what exactly has caused the crash. There are controversial stories coming from eyewitnesses and we are investigating,” Mohamud told The Associated Press on Saturday.
Pilot said engine was on fire
Mogadishu International Airport Manager Mohmed Ahmed Siyaad said that before the plane crashed, the captain contacted the control tower and said one of the engines caught fire.
Transaviaexport, based in Minsk, Belarus, operates only Ilyushin-76s, one of the largest cargo planes in the world. The aircraft requires a crew of six, is about 155 feet long and can carry 99,200 pounds of cargo.
Capt. Paddy Ankunda, spokesman for the Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia, said the plane had brought crew to work on another plane that was hit by a mechanical failure earlier this month.
Another plane had made an emergency landing March 9. An Islamic group claimed it had hit that plane with a missile, but Somali and peacekeeping officials said it was likely a mechanical failure that led to the emergency landing.
Four days later, a Belarus official confirmed the plane had been hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.
Daily violence in the capital has hit civilians the hardest.
Truce brings calm
A truce between Ethiopian military officials who had come to bolster the government and elders of Mogadishu’s dominant clan, the Hawiye, took effect Friday and much of the violence halted.
Mogadishu remained calm Saturday.
Government officials have said their offensive this week was focused on parts of the capital controlled by the Habr Gedir clan, a branch of the larger Hawiye clan.
The Habr Gedir clan is a major supporter of the more radical elements of Islamic courts that controlled the capital and southern Somalia for six months before Somali government troops, backed by Ethiopian forces, ousted them in December.
Somalia has been without an effective central government since 1991. The current administration has failed to assert control throughout the country, and the African Union deployed the small force of Ugandans to defend it.