An Angolan air force plane crashed Wednesday at Huambo airport in the centre of the country, killing at least 30 people, including three army generals, a military official told AFP.
Six survivors, including the pilot and co-pilot, were taken to a military hospital with burn wounds.
There were also civilians among the victims, including two women and two children, the source said.
“I don’t know what happened, the plane was fine during taxi and takeoff, and then I really do not know what happened,” captain Jose Goncalves, who survived the crash, said from hospital.
The Brazilian-made Embraer jet also had several air force officers on board when it crashed around midday, not long after takeoff from Angola’s second city of Huambo en route for the capital Luanda about 600 kilometres (370 miles) to the northwest, with a planned stopover in Benguela on the west coast.
The plane was used to transport senior officers.
A hospital official said five of the injured suffered second degree burn wounds and one passenger was in a serious condition with third degree burns.
Angola’s state-run Angop news agency named two of the dead as Lieutenant-General Bernardo Leitao Francisco Diogo and Lieutenant General Elias Malungo Bravo da Costa Pedro.
A photograph issued by Angop showed the plane broken in two pieces upon impact, and the BBC reported that those in the front section survived while those in the back perished when it caught fire.
“It is too early to verify the causes of the accident. A commission of inquiry will be set up,” Ernesto Dos Santos, who is in charge of transport for the Angolan Air Force, told AFP, adding the investigation could take “one or two months”.
Oil-rich Angola, which vies with Nigeria for the title of Africa’s top producer of crude oil, has been on a massive infrastructure spending spree since the end of its nearly three-decade civil war which ended in 2002 after claiming some 500,000 lives and devastating the economy.
Despite the end of the conflict, defence spending continues to account for a large percentage of the overall budget.
Angola has one of the largest standing armies in central and southern Africa and one of the largest air forces in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Angolan Armed Forces were put together with the members of two former enemy forces — the MPLA which is now in government and UNITA, which has become the main opposition in parliament.
Poverty and poor infrastructure has hampered air safety in many African countries, and Angola has a poor safety record with the EU banning several of its airlines.