{{An Ethiopian military aircraft carrying ammunition crash-landed at Mogadishu’s international airport on Friday, bursting into flames and killing at least one crew member, airport staff and security officials said.}}<\/p>\n
The plane got into trouble in the air and then missed the runway, crashing into the ground nearby.<\/p>\n
Ethiopian troops are supporting Somalia’s fight against al Qaeda-linked militants in the Horn of Africa country, although they are not part of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping force.<\/p>\n
“We can hear explosions as it burns. It is burning like hell,” said one security source at the airport shortly after the accident.<\/p>\n
Yusuf Nur, an airport worker, said rounds of ammunition exploded in the fire.<\/p>\n
A convoy of empty Somali military trucks had earlier been seen at the airport.<\/p>\n
The fire, which was initially too intense for firefighting crews to tackle, was put out about two hours after the plane crashed. Witnesses said only a blackened shell remained.<\/p>\n
Military aircraft regularly land at the city’s airport, which also serves as the headquarters for the AU peacekeepers.<\/p>\n
Authorities closed the airport, which has received a growing number of passenger flights over the past two years after African troops and Somali government forces flushed Islamist al Shabaab rebels from their bases in the capital.<\/p>\n
Somalia’s aviation record is among the worst on a continent which has a history of plane disasters. Until recently, the carcass of a Russian-made cargo plane lay tilted on its belly between the runway and passenger terminal of Mogadishu’s airport.<\/p>\n
Somalia is emerging from more than two decades of civil conflict. Security has improved in Mogadishu, which until mid-2011 was the frontline in the battle between government forces and militants, though the capital is still vulnerable to insurgent attacks.<\/p>\n
reuters<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{An Ethiopian military aircraft carrying ammunition crash-landed at Mogadishu’s international airport on Friday, bursting into flames and killing at least one crew member, airport staff and security officials said.}} The plane got into trouble in the air and then missed the runway, crashing into the ground nearby. Ethiopian troops are supporting Somalia’s fight against al […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[99],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-9610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-greatlakesnews","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9610"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=9610"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=9610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}