Plane crashes into Congo market, killing at least 33.

GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO (APRIL 15, 2008) MONUC -

A Congolese airliner crashed into a market district in the eastern
city of Goma on Tuesday (April 15), killing at least 33 people and injuring
80, officials said.
    The Hewa Bora Airways McDonnell Douglas DC-9 ploughed into a crowded
neighbourhood of Goma, capital of Democratic Republic of Congo's eastern North
Kivu Province, after bad weather forced the pilot to abort take-off.
    A local governor and the Congolese Red Cross had initially reported
only six survivors and more than 70 dead, but Dirk Cramers, marketing director
of Hewa Bora, said the majority of the 79 passengers aboard the plane had
survived.
    Cramers put the confirmed death toll so far at 21, and said he believed
all were killed in the Birere market district which was struck by the airliner
when it failed to lift off.
    The crash was the latest aviation disaster to hit the DRC, a vast
central African state the size of western Europe which is  recovering from a
war and has one of the world's worst air safety records.
    Residents heard a big explosion, which flattened at least one building,
scattering bricks and masonry, and set several more on fire. A large plume of
smoke rose from the crash site.
    "I was shopping and then heard a big noise that sounded like a
bomb and then the building started to move, I was fighting to get out but when
I got outside the building, I saw a big plane burning on the ground,"
said a local resident.
    The nose and cockpit section of the airliner was left largely intact,
jutting into the debris of crushed stalls and shattered houses in a street of
the Birere district.
    Congolese police and United Nations soldiers, members of the U.N.
peacekeeping contingent in Congo, had struggled to keep back hordes of
onlookers who swarmed over the crash site.
    Goma airport, located within sight of a nearby volcano, has suffered
several crashes in the past.
    AFR/JRC