Kenya light aircraft crash kills 5

Two Americans and a French citizen were among five people killed when a light aircraft crashed in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley region on Wednesday according to the police.

A Kenyan pilot and an unidentified white male also died when the plane, a Cessna 206, clipped a tree as it attempted an emergency landing and crashed in a field in Kericho county to the west of the capital Nairobi.

“The accident occurred at around 10 a.m. involving this aircraft you see behind me. It was flying low and hit that tree and hence the crash. It had five persons on board who, unfortunately, all of them lost their lives. These are one African, four light-skinned persons, one of them being a lady,” Kericho County police commander, James Mogera said.

The Kenya Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement it received a distress signal from the plane which was flying from the Maasai Mara wildlife reserve to the far north Kenyan county of Turkana just before it crashed.

Witnesses said the plane was making unusual sounds as it approached the field. The pilot tried to gesture at farm workers on the ground below to get them to move out of the way, before the rear hit a tree, crashing in the process.

Last year, eight passengers and two pilots were killed when a single turboprop Cessna Caravan plane operated by local firm FlySax on a domestic flight to Kenya’s capital Nairobi crashed into a mountain.

REUTERS