AN Air Algerie passenger plane, which vanished from radar over northern Mali in West Africa, had crashed, an Algerian aviation official said Thursday.

    “I can confirm that it has crashed,” the official said, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident.

    About 50 French citizens were on board, a representative of the airline told a news conference in Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso.

    Two French fighter jets were searching for the airliner, which was carrying 110 passengers and six crew.

    The plane was traveling from Ouagadougou to the Algerian capital Algiers when it vanished around 50 minutes into the flight. The plane vanished over the Malian region of Gao, some 500 km southern of the Algerian border, Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal said.

    The pilot asked for permission to change route because of a storm around 20 minutes into the flight, said Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedrago.

    Flight AH5017 is owned by Spanish private airline Swiftair and operated by Air Algerie.

    Swiftair said the aircraft took off from Burkina Faso at 1:17 a.m. local time and was supposed to land in Algiers at 5:10 a.m. but never reached its destination.

    The McDonnell Douglas MD-83 had been missing for hours before news of its disappearance was made public.

    AH5017’s disappearance came less than six months after Algeria’s worst air disaster in a decade. Some 77 people were killed when a military transport plane carrying members of the Algerian armed forces and their relatives hit a mountain and crashed in the east of the country.

    (SD-Agencies)