Eleven people were injured after a Boeing 737 plane skidded off the runway in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, with 85 people on board, according to a statement Thursday from the country’s transport minister.
“Our plane just caught fire.”wrote Malian musician Cheick Siriman Sissoko in a Facebook post that showed passengers exiting emergency ramps in the middle of the night, as flames engulfed the side of the aircraft. You could hear people screaming in the background.
The Air Sénégal flight operated by TransAir was heading to Bamako, the capital of Mali, on Wednesday night with 79 passengers, two pilots and four crew members, said the minister, El Malick Ndiaye.
The injured were being treated at a hospital, while the other survivors had been taken to a hotel to rest.
At first no further details were available.
Diass airport, about 50 kilometers from Dakar, is closed for the moment and will reopen in the coming hours, LAS reported.
The plane was “immobilized” off the runway and airport authorities activated the emergency plan as soon as they were alerted, he said.
“All airport emergency services have been mobilized for the evacuation of passengers and their care, as planned,” LAS added.
The Aviation Safety Network (ASN), which monitors plane crashes, posted photos of the crashed plane in a grass field surrounded by firefighting foam on X, formerly Twitter. An engine appeared to have broken and one of the wings was also damaged, according to the images.
ASN is part of the Flight Safety Foundation, a non-profit group that aims to promote aviation safety and monitors accidents.
An investigation has already been opened to establish the cause of the incident.
The LAS management group that runs the airport is made up of the Turkish groups Limak and Summa and the international public airport Blaise Diagne de Diass.
(with information from AP and AFP)
