(Reuters) - An
Air Algerie flight crashed on Thursday en route from Ouagadougou in
Burkina Faso to Algiers with 110 passengers on board, an Algerian
aviation official said.
There were few clear
indications of what might have happened to the aircraft, or whether
there were casualties, but Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin
Ouedrago said it asked to change route at 0138 GMT because of a storm in
the area.
"I can confirm that it
has crashed," the Algerian official told Reuters, declining to be
identified or give any details about what had happened to the aircraft
on its way north.
Almost half of the passengers were French citizens, an airline official said.
Two
French fighter jets based in the region have been dispatched to try to
locate the airliner along its probable route, a French army spokesman
said. Niger security sources said planes were flying over the border
region with Mali to search for the flight. Algeria's state
news agency APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH 5017 an
hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, but other officials gave
differing accounts of the times of contact, adding to confusion about
the plane's fate.
