Mali Plane Crash Kills 116 Passengers of Air Algerie

The airlines said on its Twitter account that the plane went down about 40 miles from the Malian city of Gao.

An Air Algerie flight en route to Algiers from Burkina Faso with 116 people aboard — including 50 French citizens — crashed Thursday in southeastern Mali, the airlines said.

The airlines said on its Twitter account that the plane went down about 40 miles from the Malian city of Gao. It did not give any additional details.

Air navigation services lost track of AH0517 about 50 minutes after takeoff at 0155 GMT (9:55 p.m. ET Wednesday), the Algerian news agency APS reports.

An unidentified Algerian aviation official also told Reuters that the plane had crashed, but declined to provide details on where the plane was or what caused the accident.CBS News also quotes an unidentified Algerian officials as saying the plane had crashed.