Four Dead In Kenyan Safari Plane Crash

August 22, 2012 | Filed under: Africa | Posted by:

 

Maasai Mara Game Reserve 

 Four people have died after a tourist plane with 14 people on board crashed in Kenya’s Maasai Mara park.

Police say two pilots and two German tourists were killed when the Mombasa Air Safari flight went down in Ngrende.

The Kenyan Civil Aviation Authority had previously reported three people dead.

But Narok district police chief Peterson Maelo said a middle-aged German man, an elderly German woman and two Kenyan pilots had died from their injuries.

“Those injured have been taken to Nairobi for treatment,” he said.

A total of five Germans, four Americans and two Czechs were reported on board the aircraft.

Catherine Ochola from Flying Doctors Service, an air ambulance service, said three “more critical patients” had been flown to Nairobi.

A second air ambulance and Kenya’s air force rescued other passengers.

Michael Koikai, a warden with Kenya Wildlife Service, said the plane had crashed shortly after takeoff from the Ngerende airstrip around midday.

The Maasai Mara, some 155 miles (250km) southwest of the capital Nairobi, is one of Kenya’s most popular safari destinations for its currently ongoing annual migration of wildebeest, attracting tens of thousands of tourists to the park.

Many choose to fly into hotels or luxury tented camps landing on simple dirt airstrips, rather than brave the long drive on often poor roads from Nairobi

source: sky