17 Feared Dead in Congo Plane Crash

NAIROBI, Kenya — Seventeen people were feared dead in eastern Congo after a small plane carrying United Nations employees and other aid workers slammed into a mountainside, United Nations officials said on Tuesday.

The plane disappeared during a fierce thunderstorm on Monday afternoon, and the crash site is so steep, remote and thickly forested that rescuers have been unable to reach it. United Nations helicopters have been circling the wreckage, but so far there are no signs of life.

“From the air, it definitely seems like there were no survivors,” said Christophe Illemassene, a United Nations spokesman in Congo. “The wreckage was very much spread around, and there were no major structures left. This would mean a very strong impact into the mountain wall. This plane most likely slammed into the mountain.”

Congo has one of the world’s worst records for air safety, which is an especially serious problem for the country’s many aid workers because there are few roads. Congo is immense — roughly the size of Western Europe — so small propjets operated by little-known companies are often the only way to get from one city to the next.

In April, more than 30 people were killed when a plane crashed after a flawed take-off from the eastern city of Goma. In October 2007, dozens were killed after a cargo plane dropped from the sky and plowed into a crowded marketplace in the capital, Kinshasa.

On Monday at around 2 p.m., the control tower in Bukavu, a hilly town on the Rwandan border, lost contact with an incoming plane. The plane was a twin-engine Beechcraft operated by a contractor for Air Serv International, an American nonprofit aviation company that flies humanitarian workers. On board were 15 passengers and two crew members. The passengers were a mix of foreign and Congolese aid workers. Several worked for United Nations agencies in Congo, which has been plagued by civil war for years.

Lashing thunderstorms hampered rescue efforts on Monday, and it was not until Tuesday morning that the United Nations was able to confirm that the plane had crashed, apparently as it was making its final approach into Bukavu. No cause has been determined, though United Nations officials cited the bad weather.

United Nations peacekeepers were trying to reach the site by foot, Mr. Illemassene said Tuesday evening, but even that was proving difficult.

“It’s a very remote area, it’s jungly and it’s raining,” he said.