ALGIERS – An Algerian military plane crashed and caught fire on Wednesday killing 257 people, mostly army personnel and members of their families.
Hundreds of ambulances and dozens of fire trucks with their sirens wailing rushed to the field near the Boufarik airbase, from where the plane had taken off, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) southwest of Algiers.
Footage from the scene of the crash shows smoke coming off the wreckage in a field.
WATCH: ‘Around 105 people killed’ as #Algerian military plane crashes near capital https://t.co/heIKhPzcNp pic.twitter.com/CcWXxzCdW6
— Al Arabiya English (@AlArabiya_Eng) April 11, 2018
The defense ministry said in a statement that 247 passengers and 10 crew were killed without mentioning any survivors.
The reasons for the crash remain unclear.
Deputy Defense Minister General Ahmed Gaid Salah visited the site and ordered an investigation into the circumstances of the crash, the defense ministry said.
The Ilyushin II-76 transport plane was bound for Tindouf in southwest Algeria.
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Algeria has suffered a string of military and civilian aviation disasters.
Two military planes collided mid-flight in December 2012 during a training exercise in Tlemcen, in the far west of the country, killing the pilots of both planes.
In February 2014, 77 people died when a military plane carrying army personnel and family members crashed between Tamanrasset in southern Algeria and the eastern city of Constantine.
Only one person survived after the C-130 Hercules transport aircraft came down in the mountainous Oum El Bouaghi region.
The defense ministry blamed that crash on bad weather.
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An Air Algerie passenger plane flying from Burkina Faso to Algiers crashed in northern Mali in July 2014, killing all 116 people on board including 54 French nationals.
In October the same year, a military plane crashed in the south of the country during a training exercise, killing the two men on board.
That came more than a decade after all but one of the 103 people on an Air Algerie Boeing 737-200 died in March 2003 when it crashed on takeoff in the country’s south after an engine caught fire.
