By Naomi Schwarz
GOMA, Congo (Reuters) - A Congolese airliner crashed into amarket district in the eastern city of Goma on Tuesday, killingat least 21 people on the ground, while the airline said mostof the 79 passengers on board survived.
A local governor and the Congolese Red Cross had initiallyreported only six survivors and more than 70 dead after theHewa Bora Airways McDonnell Douglas DC-9 ploughed into acrowded district of Goma, capital of Democratic Republic ofCongo's eastern North Kivu Province.
But Dirk Cramers, marketing director of Hewa Bora, said themajority of the 79 passengers aboard the plane survived.
"With the help of the U.N., we were able to pull out almostall of the passengers before it ignited," Cramers told Reuters.He said all of the seven crew members had also survived.
Cramers put the confirmed death toll so far at 21, and saidhe believed all were killed on the ground in the Birere marketdistrict struck by the airliner when it failed to lift off.
North Kivu governor Julien Paluku, who earlier said sixpeople aboard the plane survived the crash, later told Reuters19 bodies had been recovered so far and 76 injured people werebeing treated in hospitals in Goma.
"The plane fell on a populated district," Paluku said,adding rescue teams were still working at the crash site. Hesaid it was too early to give a final death toll.
The crash was the latest aviation disaster to hit Congo, avast central African state the size of western Europe which isstill recovering from a war and has one of the world's worstair safety records.
Cramers said the plane had failed to reach takeoff speedbecause of water lying on the runway after a heavy downpour.When the pilot tried to abort the takeoff, the plane skiddedthrough a wall into the market area.
"It was an abortive take-off and the aircraft ran into thewall. Just behind the wall there were some local shops. Andmost of the casualties come from there," he said.
ACCIDENT "WAITING TO HAPPEN"
"I was in my seat with my seat belt fastened. There was abig crash. We jumped up and found our way out. We could feelthe fire behind us," said one of the survivors, 51-year-oldFrederic Katemo, who said he scrambled out through the cockpit.
He suffered only singed hair and a bruised leg.
The nose and cockpit section of the airliner was leftlargely intact, jutting into the debris of crushed stalls andshattered houses in a street of the Birere district.
Residents heard a big explosion, which flattened at leastone building, scattering bricks and masonry, and set severalmore on fire. A large plume of smoke rose from the crash site.
Congolese police and United Nations soldiers, members ofthe U.N. peacekeeping contingent in Congo, had struggled tokeep back hordes of onlookers who swarmed over the crash site.
Goma airport, located within sight of a nearby volcano, hassuffered several crashes in the past.
"We have been waiting for something like this to happen.There have been lots of accidents just behind here at theairport," Serge Ukundji, a conservationist with the FrankfurtZoological Society who lives in Goma, told Reuters.
Last week, the European Union added Congo's Hewa BoraAirways to a list of aviation companies banned from flying inthe 27-nation bloc over safety concerns.
There were eight plane crashes in Democratic Republic ofCongo last year, according to the Geneva-based Aircraft CrashesRecord Office (ACRO).
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says theair accident rate in Africa is six times worse than in the restof the world and calls this an "embarrassment".
Aviation safety experts single out Democratic Republic ofCongo, which is still struggling to recover from a devastating1998-2003 war, as one of the worst offenders. The huge countryonly has a few hundred kilometres (miles) of paved roads.
Passengers and cargo are packed onto ageing planes, oftenSoviet-built, which fly to multiple remote destinations acrossthe former Belgian central African colony.
(For full Reuters Africa coverage and to have your say onthe top issues, visit: http://africa.reuters.com/)
(Additional reporting by Lubunga Bya'Ombe in Kinshasa,William Schomberg in Brussels, writing by Pascal Fletcher andNick Tattersall, Editing by Ibon Villelabeitia)
