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60 dead in Equatorial Guinea plane crash
"They didn't want to alarm people before they knew what had happened to the plane," a transport ministry official, who did not want to be named, said. Officials have now have set up a crisis unit, including several government ministers, charged with overseeing the salvage operation, identifying the dead and reporting on developments. An eyewitness said Saturday that he saw the aircraft go down shortly after takeoff at 10:00 am (0900 GMT) from Malabo for the city of Bata on the Equatorial Guinea mainland. The wreckage was not located until eight hours later near the district of Baney, the government statement indicated. The plane skidded over trees for a distance of about a kilometer (half a mile) before it crashed, according to aerial photographs, the statement added. Ecuatair, which is among a handful of companies serving domestic routes in the west African country, has only one other plane, a Soviet-built Yak-40. Most of the planes, piloted mainly by Russians, Ukrainians and Armenians, are Soviet-era aircraft that often no longer meet international flight standards and are not allowed to land at airports in other countries in the region. Several international organizations ask their employees not to use the airlines. In April Equatorial Guinea authorities grounded another local company, the Union de Transportes Aereo de Guinea Ecuatorial, for safety reasons after a series of technical breakdowns. Equatorial Guinea, with a population of just over one million, is in the midst of an oil boom, and has seen double-digit growth since the mid-1990s.
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