New Delhi: A commercial plane carrying 43 people crashed into Lake Victoria in Tanzania due to bad weather shortly before it was due to land in the northwestern city of Bukoba on Sunday, news agency AFP reported.
"There was an accident involving a Precision Air plane which... crashed into water about 100 metres from the airport," AFP quoted regional police commander William Mwampaghale as saying.
According to regional commissioner Albert Chalamila, 43 people were aboard the flight, including 39 passengers, two pilots and two cabin crew. The flight was on its way from financial capital Dar es Salaam to the lakeside city in Kagera region.
Chalamila said that 26 people who have been rescued so far were taken to the hospital and added the rescue operation is still underway.
Precision Air, Tanzania's largest private airline, in a statement said, “The rescue team has been dispatched to the scene and more information will be released in 2 hours' time.”
Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan expressed her condolence to those affected in the accident.
She took to Twitter and wrote, “I have received with sadness the information of the crash of the Precision Air flight at Lake Victoria, in the Kagera region. I send my condolences to all those affected by this incident. Let’s continue to be calm as the rescue operation continues and we pray to God to help us.”
Notably, earlier on March 2019, an Ethiopian Airlines flight from Addis Ababa to Nairobi crashed six minutes after take-off into a field, southeast of the Ethiopian capital, killing all 157 people on board.
In 2007, a Kenya Airways flight from Ivory Coast city of Abidjan to Kenya's capital Nairobi crashed into a swamp after take-off, killing all 114 passengers.
In 2000, another Kenya Airways flight from Abidjan to Nairobi, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean soon after take-off, killing 169 people, while 10 survived.