No survivors in Mozambican plane crash

A Mozambique Airlines plane has crashed in a game park in northeast Namibi, killing all 34 people on board, Namibian police have said.

The plane, en route from Mozambique to Angola, went down in remote terrain in the Bwabwata National Park, where Namibia turns into a narrow strip of land sandwiched between Botswana and Angola.

“My team on the ground have found the wreckage. No survivors. The plane is totally burned,” Willie Bampton, a regional police coordinator in the Kavango region, said on Saturday.

Flight TM470 from Maputo, the Mozambican capital, did not land as scheduled in Luanda, the Angolan capital, on Friday afternoon, and the airline initially said the plane might have landed in Rundu, in northern Namibia.

It said it coordinated with aviation authorities in Namibia, Botswana and Angola to locate the missing plane.

A Namibian police helicopter joined officers on the ground in the search.

The plane was carrying 28 passengers, including 10 Mozambicans, nine Angolans, five Portuguese, and one citizen each from France, Brazil and China, said the airline. Six crew members were on board, it said.

The area is vast and there are no roads, making it difficult to locate the plane, Bampton was quoted by the Namibian Press Agency as saying.

The search was conducted in the Bwabwata National Park in northeastern Namibia. Several thousand people as well as elephants, buffalo and other animals live in the park, which covers 6,100 square kilometres.