A PASSENGER plane carrying 94 people crashed in the town of Goma in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo yesterday shortly after taking off, an official with the Goma airport told Xinhua.

A witness in Goma, the capital of eastern North Kivu province, said the Boeing 727 crashed into a busy market street.

“Half of the plane has broken off. There is a fire towards the back. People are coming with buckets of water to put out the fire. The United Nations is here trying to keep back the crowds,” the witness said.

“It destroyed a building. The two buildings next door are blackened,” she added.

Goma residents reported hearing a big explosion and seeing a large plume of smoke.

There was no immediate information on casualties.

“I can confirm there has been a crash. I can see the smoke from my office window,” said a U.N. official, who asked not to be named.

Another official said at least 10 had been pulled from the wreckage and taken to a hospital.

The flight was headed to Kinshasa, Congo’s capital, said Gauthier Iloko, the adjunct commander of the Goma airport.

“We are preoccupied with trying to save as many survivors as possible,” Iloko said. “It’s difficult to give a number, but there are already at least 10 survivors that were pulled out of the wreck and who were sent to the hospital.”

Democratic Republic of Congo, a vast country the size of western Europe with only a few hundred kilometers of paved roads, has one of the world’s worst aviation safety records.

There were eight plane crashes in the country last year, including one in the capital Kinshasa in which an Antonov 26 plunged into a crowded neighborhood, killing more than 50 people.

One of the worst air accidents in Congo’s history occurred in 1996, when an Antonov 32 turboprop crashed seconds after takeoff from Kinshasa’s airport, plowing into a crowded open-air market and killing about 300 people.(SD-Xinhua)