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Swede among Kenya Airways crash passengers

TT/The Local
TT/The Local - [email protected]
Swede among Kenya Airways crash passengers

A Swedish citizen was among 114 people onboard the Kenya Airways plane which crashed early on Saturday morning, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs has confirmed.

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The plane, a Boeing 737-800, came down in southern Cameroon, between the coastal town of Kribi and the border with Equatorial Guinea, shortly after take-off.

There were 105 passengers on the plane and 9 crew, according to Kenya Airways. Of those, 79 were Africans, 21 were Asians and 7 were Europeans. There was one American onboard and 6 people whose nationality has not been confirmed.

One of the passengers was Swedish.

"The airline has confirmed that there was a Swede onboard, but it will not release the passenger list until this evening at the earliest," said Petra Hansson in the foreign ministry's press office.

She said that the Swedish embassy in Kenya is trying to find out more information.

"There appear to have been other EU citizens onboard so there are several embassies in Nairobi which are working on getting more details, so we are cooperating with them," said Hansson.

Air traffic controllers lost contact with the aircraft shortly after take-off in the city of Douala, where it made a stopover en route from Abidjan in the Ivory Coast to the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.

The plane set off early on Saturday morning - just after midnight Swedish time - despite storm winds and soon disappeared from radar screens. The last contact was a distress signal, a source told news agency AFP.

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