Search for Missing Medical Plane Carrying Seven Off Senegal
An air and sea search was going on Sunday for a medical evacuation plane carrying seven people, including a French patient, which went down off the coast of Senegal.
The twin-engine aircraft flying from Burkina Faso to Dakar disappeared from radars shortly after 7 pm (1900 GMT) on Saturday over the Atlantic, 111 kilometers west of the the Senegalese capital, Senegal's civil aviation authority Anacim said in a statement.
Senegal's air force was searching the area for wreckage of the plane that left Burkina Faso's capital Ouagadougou at 4:35 pm (1635 GMT), according to airport sources in Burkina Faso.
Senegal's state press service APS reported that search operations led by two air force planes and a navy ship had continued through Sunday afternoon.
The plane, which had been due to arrive in Dakar at 6:20 pm, belonged to the private Senegalair company, Anacim said.
No reason for why the plane seems to have overshot Dakar so far to the west when it crashed has thus far been given.
Senegal's Futurs Medias news group reported that the aircraft was suspected of having run out of fuel.
Apart from the patient, the plane was carrying two Senegalese nurses and a doctor as well as a Congolese man and two Algerian crew members.
Contacted by AFP, France's Foreign Affairs Ministry declined to reveal the identity of the French patient who was being airlifted, nor the reason for the person's presence in Ouagadougou.
Officials did say the French embassy in Dakar was in contact with the patient's family.
Source: Agence France Presse
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