ALGIERS---More than 250 people including members of Western Sahara’s Polisario independence movement were killed when a military plane crashed in a field outside Algeria’s capital on Wednesday, officials said.
Television footage showed crowds gathering 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.
![An Algerian military plane is seen after crashing near an airport outside the capital Algiers, Algeria, April 11, 2018 in this still image taken from a video. (Ennahar TV/Handout/ via Reuters)](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F04%2F11%2F2018-04-11T113152Z_1_LYNXMPEE3A0W4_RTROPTP_4_ALGERIA-PLANE-600x342.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
A total of 257 people died in the crash, state TV reported.
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.
The plane was heading to Tindouf, an area on Algeria’s border with Western Sahara, but crashed on the airport’s perimeter, Algeria’s defense ministry said.
![Bodies are seen on the ground after a plane crashed into a field outside Algiers, Algeria April 11, 2018 in this still image taken from a video. (Ennahar TV/Handout/ via Reuters)](/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2018%2F04%2F11%2F2018-04-11T110310Z_1_LYNXMPEE3A0TX_RTROPTP_4_ALGERIA-PLANE-600x322.jpg&w=1200&q=75)
Tindouf is home to thousands of refugees from the Western Sahara standoff, many of them Polisario supporters.
U.N. attempts to broker a settlement have failed for years in the vast desert area, which has contested since 1975 when Spanish colonial powers left. Morocco claimed the territory while Polisario established its self-declared Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic there.
Algeria’s defense ministry issued a statement expressing condolences to families of the victims.
In February 2014, an Algerian Air Force Lockheed C-130 Hercules crashed in a mountainous area in eastern Algeria killing 77 passengers and leaving one survivor.