Algerian plane with more than 120 passengers missing

ALGIERS— An Air Algerie plane  is confirmed crashed in Niger during a flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers. Company officials said that there were around 120 people on board, including French and Spanish nationals.

Agence France Presse FP the aircraft was told by an aviation source that the aircraft was  a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 rented from Spanish company Swiftair carrying more than 100 passengers of different nationalities including its 6 Spanish crew members.

The plane was gone missing and lost its contact less than an hour after takeoff from Ouagadougou while another source said that the contact was  lost while the airliner was still in Malian airspace and heading to the border of Algeria.  France’s Transport Minister Frederic Cuvillier said in Paris said that many French nationals were thought on board the plane.

He said after a government meeting that top civil aviation officials were holding an emergency meeting and a crisis cell had been set up.Earlier reports had said the plane was a DC-9.

“The plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500 kilometres (300 miles) from the Algerian border. Several nationalities are among the victims,” Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said in an Algerian radio.

Further, Mali was seized by jihadist group or several months in 2012. Despite the international military involvement, the condition in northern Mali continued to be unstable.