Wreckage of Air Algerie plane found in Mali

This article is more than 12 months old

Jul 25, 2014 07:38 am

The wreckage of an Air Algerie plane that was missing has been found in Mali near the Burkina Faso border, said an army coordinator in Ouagadougou.

The Algerian Flight AH5017, which took off from Ouagadougou bound for Algiers went missing 50 minutes after it took off yesterday amid reports of heavy storms.

The airline released the nationalities of the 116 people on board: 51 French, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, six Spanish, five Canadians, four Germans and two Luxembourg nationals.

French president Francois Hollande said that the plane’s Spanish crew had signalled they were altering course “due to particularly difficult weather conditions”.

An airline source said: “The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route.”

“Contact was lost after the change of course.”