Rescuers around the wreckage of an Algerian army plane which crashed near the Boufarik airbase from where the plane had taken off on Wednesday, killing 257 people, mostly army personnel and members of their families — AFP Photo ALGIERS, Apr 11 (Reuters): More than 250 people were killed when a military plane crashed in a field outside Algeria's capital on Wednesday, state media said, in the country's worst air disaster.
Television footage showed crowds and emergency vehicles massing around the smoking and flaming wreckage near Boufarik airport southwest of Algiers.
A line of white body bags could be seen on the ground next to what media said was a Russian Ilyushin transport plane.
A total of 257 people were killed, most of them military, the defence ministry said. Ten crew and other people described as family members also died, and a number of survivors were being treated at an army hospital, the ministry added.
A member of Algeria's ruling FLN party told the private Ennahar TV station the dead included 26 members of Polisario, an Algerian-backed group fighting for the independence of neighboring Western Sahara - a territory also claimed by Morocco in a long-running dispute.
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