A hulking military transport plane crashed just after takeoff in Algeria on Wednesday, killing 257 people in the worst aviation disaster in the North African nation's history and plunging the country into mourning. "The plane crashed on its wing first and caught fire." The Algerian military, which historically depended on the Soviet Union and then Russia for military hardware, operates several of the planes. According to Aviation Safety Network, the 2003 crash of an IL-76 of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard killed 275 people. The US Embassy in Algiers expressed its "deepest condolences" to "our partners and colleagues in the Algerian military," one of the numerous condolences that flooded into the capital from far and wide.

Source: The North Africa Journal April 12, 2018 04:29 UTC