{A Mozambique Airlines flight en route to Angola crashed in a game park in northeast Namibia, killing all 34 people on board, a Namibian official confirmed on Saturday.}
The charred wreckage of the plane, which went missing on Friday, was found in the Bwabwata National Park, Namibian Police Force Deputy Commissioner Willy Bampton told the Reuters news agency.
The 6,100-square-kilometre (618-square-mile) reserve covers the narrow strip of land formerly known as the Caprivi strip, a sparsely-populated area near Namibia’s borders with Angola and Botswana with wetlands and dense forests.
“The plane has been completely burnt to ashes and there are no survivors,” Bampton said.
Flight TM470 took off from Mozambique’s capital Maputo at 9:26am on Friday and was scheduled to land in Angola’s capital Luanda the same afternoon, but never arrived. Mozambique Airlines CEO Marlene Manave told journalists the last contact had been at 11:30am.
Mozambique Airlines, like all Mozambican carriers, has been banned from operating in the European Union since 2011 for “significant safety deficiencies”.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS, AFP)
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