Dodoma, SANA-A Tanzanian passenger plane has crashed into Lake Victoria as it attempted to land in the lakeside town of Bukoba, killing at least 19 people.<\/p>\n
Twenty-six of the 43 people on board the Precision Air flight were initially rescued and sent to hospital.<\/p>\n
The two pilots survived the crash and managed to speak to local officials from the cockpit but the prime minister says they may have since died.<\/p>\n
Rescue workers and local fishermen are trying to rescue others still trapped.<\/p>\n
Abdul Nuri was at the airport waiting for the return flight to Tanzania’s biggest city, Dar es Salaam, when he saw the plane plunge into the water.<\/p>\n
“We were really shocked. People panicked and some started crying and shouting,” he said.<\/p>\n
“At the arrivals gate people panicked as well – most of them were waiting to welcome their relatives.”<\/p>\n
He has spoken to the fishermen who were the first on the scene. They told him that they managed to get into the plane to rescue people after a flight attendant opened the rear door while the plane was in the water.<\/p>\n
The crash has been blamed on bad weather but the rain has stopped, allowing rescuers to reach the crash site.<\/p>\n
Emergency workers have used ropes to pull the ATR-42 aircraft closer to the shore, and some of the plane’s body is now above the water.<\/p>\n
MHD Ibrtahim<\/p>\n
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Dodoma, SANA-A Tanzanian passenger plane has crashed into Lake Victoria as it attempted to land in the lakeside town of Bukoba, killing at least 19 people. Twenty-six of the 43 people on board the Precision Air flight were initially rescued and sent to hospital. The two pilots survived the crash and managed to speak to …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":289352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6987],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-289351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-arabic-international","category-latest-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=289351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/289351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/289352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=289351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=289351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.sana.sy\/en\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=289351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}