Congo ousts minister in wake of deadly crash

KINSHASA, Congo - Congo fired its transport minister yesterday as emergency workers extinguished the last flames from a plane crash in the capital and found still more bodies in the wreckage. The death toll climbed to at least 50, officials said.

Saleh Kinyongo, spokesman for Congo's humanitarian affairs ministry, said 28 bodies had been retrieved so far, all of them residents of the neighborhood where the plane crashed. Twenty-two passengers on the flight were presumed dead, he said.

The cargo plane slammed into three houses Thursday just after taking off from Kinshasa's international airport on a flight to central Congo. Six homes were destroyed in either the crash or the conflagration that burned until early yesterday, the humanitarian affairs ministry said.

A government spokesman announced the firing of Transport Minister Remy Kuseyo but did not say if Kuseyo was accused of wrongdoing or negligence.

Kuseyo had said that the plane should have been kept from taking off from N'Djili Airport by a three-week-old ban put on Antonov-model planes after recent crashes. He argued yesterday that his dismissal was unjust.

"I had taken measures," he said, "but I am not the one who was to have put the measures in place on the ground."

The crash Thursday underscored the dangers of flying in Congo, which has experienced more fatal air crashes than any other African country since 1945, according to the Aviation Safety Network. The turboprop belonged to the Congolese company Africa One, which had been barred from flying in the European Union because of safety concerns.