Air Algerie AH5017 with 116 onboard crashed in Mali - reports

An Air Algerie flight carrying 110 passengers and six crew members has reportedly crashed in Mali after having disappeared from radar early on Thursday morning between Burkina Faso and Algeria.
"I have just been informed that the wreckage has been found between Aguelhoc and Kidal," Mali's president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, said at a meeting of political, religious and civil society leaders in Bamako, reported Reuters. Aguelhoc and Kidal are located in a desert region in the north of the country.
A French Ministry of Defense had told Fox News earlier that the two French fighter jets located the wreckage, while the airline placed the likely location of the crash further south west.
“The plane would have crashed in the region of Tilemsi, 70km from Gao,” Air Algerie tweeted.
 However, moments beforehand, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius had announced at a press conference that the plane was still missing.
A spokeswoman for Spanish private airline company, Swiftair, confirmed that it had lost contact with one of its planes operated by Air Algerie on Thursday. The plane was an Air Algerie MD-83, flight AH5017.
"Air navigation services have lost contact with an Air Algerie plane Thursday flying from Ouagadougou to Algiers, 50 minutes after take-off,"the airline said.
Swiftair said that there had been “no contact” with the missing aircraft since.

 

Fidel Castro’s nice, Mariela Castro, a prominent gay rights activist, was initially thought to be on board the flight after the Facebook page of Burkina Faso’s main airport - Ouagadougou - stated: “Among the passengers on flight AH5017 will have been two European officials of French nationality stationed in Ouagadougou and Mariela Castro, niece of Fidel Castro, former Cuban head of state.”
However, Mariela Castro later told Venezuelan channel TeleSUR by telephone that she was 'alive' denying all reports that she had been a passenger. "I'm alive and kicking, happy and healthy," she said. The airport's Facebook page later removed the statement.
Initial reports of the crash were confirmed by Algerian aviation authorities. "I can confirm that it has crashed," an anonymous official later told Reuters. Early reports from the CCTV network and Algerian TV suggested that it went down in Niger rather than Mali