One Nigerian has been reported among the passengers on AH5017, the ill-fated Air Algerie flight which vanished with 116 people on board en route from Burkina Faso to Algiers, now confirmed to have crashed in Mali.
Mali's President, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, confirmed wreckage of the flight has been found in his country's desert north.
'I have just been informed that the wreckage has been found between Aguelhoc and Kidal,' Keita said
during a meeting of political, religious and civil society leaders in Bamako. He did not give any more details.
The Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said the list of passengers includes;
51 French, 27 Burkina Faso nationals, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, five Canadians, four Germans, two Luxemburg nationals, one Swiss, one Belgium, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Nigerian, one Cameroonian and one Malian.
The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union.
This is the third major aviation disaster in a week, following the MH17 disaster in Ukraine and the TransAsia Airways crash in Taiwan yesterday. Nearly 250 people died in these two crashes and the week's grim toll may now rise by 116 more.
Air navigation services lost track of the Swiftair MD-83 around 50 minutes into the flight after the crew reportedly asked to change course over fears it was flying into a storm.
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