An air and sea search was underway Sunday for a medical evacuation plane carrying seven people, which went down off the coast of Senegal.
Advertisement
Authorities on Monday said they assume the small rescue plane hit a Boeing 737 belonging to Equatorial Guinea’s Ceiba airline, which had departed Dakar global Airport on Saturday afternoon and was bound for Benin.
The plane, chartered by ambulance service SOS Medecin Senegal, left Ouagadougou at 4:30 p.m., Burkina Faso’s minister of transport, Daouda Traore, told Reuters.
No reason has been given for why the plane seems to have overshot Dakar so far to the west when it was last seen on radar.
Senegalese authorities stated the crews of a ship and two planes have been scouring an space off the Atlantic coast of Senegal for indicators of the wreckage.
The plane was carrying a French patient, three crew members and medical staff, including a doctor and two nurses.
“According to initial information, there was a collision between two aircrafts and we are seeking to either confirm or to rule this out with the technical investigation”, Magueye Marame Ndao, the director general of Senegalese civil aviation authority (ANACIM), said in a statement to the news agency.
Advertisement
Contacted by AFP, France’s Foreign Affairs Ministry declined to reveal the identity of the French patient who was being airlifted, nor the reason for the person’s presence in Ouagadougou.
