The wreckage of an Air Algerie flight has been discovered near Mali’s border with Burkina Faso after it vanished yesterday in West Africa.
The plane disappeared from radar screens less than an hour after take-off, heading from Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou to Algiers.
Before its disappearance, pilots sent a message to ask Niger air control to change its route because of the weather conditions.
Burkina Faso’s commander in chief Gilbert Diendere said the wreckage of flight AH5017 was found south of Gao in Mali, 30 miles north of the border, The Telegraph has reported.
The aircraft was carrying 116 people and nearly half of the passengers were French.
A statement from the Elysee Palace in Paris said the aircraft had been “clearly identified in a state of disintegration”, the Financial Times reports.
French president Francois Hollande said it wasn’t possible to say what caused the crash.
He said: “All we know is that the crew signaled it wanted to change direction because of particularly difficult weather conditions.”