South Sudan Plan Crash

Scores killed on board the aircraft and on the ground but a child and crew member survived

A Russian-built cargo plane carrying some passengers crashed on Wednesday after taking off from the airport in South Sudan's capital, killing at least 41 people who were on board and others on the ground, an official and a Reuters witness said.

A crew member and a child on board survived the crash, Ateny Wek Ateny, presidential spokesman, told Reuters. He said the plane may have had about 20 people on board, including crew and 10 to 15 passengers, while an unknown number were killed on the ground. But he said numbers were still being collated.

In addition, he said an unknown number of people were killed on the ground as the Antonov plane crashed near where some fishermen were working. "We don't know the number of people that were killed on the ground," he added.

A police officer, who did not give his name because he was not authorised to speak to the media, told Reuters at the scene that at least 41 people died, but said the number could climb. The Reuters witness said he saw 41 bodies at the site.

Earlier, South Sudanese media had said the cargo plane carried five Russian crew and seven passengers. South Sudan Tribune on Twitter also reported two survivors, one of them a child.

"Cargo plane heading to Paloch in Upper Nile State crashed just 800 metres from Juba International Airport runway," reported Radio Miraya, a UN-backed station.

An AFP reporter at the scene said he could see people trying to search for survivors and carry "several" bodies out of the wreckage.

The main fuselage of the plane had ploughed into thick woodland, with debris scattered around the riverbank in a wide area.

Juba's airport is the busiest in the war-torn country, which is the size of Spain and Portugal combined but with few tarred roads.

The airport hosts regular commercial flights, as well as a constant string of military aircraft and cargo planes delivering aid to remote regions cut off by road.

Civil war broke out in December 2013 when Salva Kiir, the president, accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that has split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic lines.