/world
(CNN) -- A humanitarian plane carrying 17 people -- most of them relief workers -- has crashed during a storm in a mountainous region in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said Tuesday.
File image of a Beechcraft 1900 aircraft.
Search and rescue crews were not immediately able to land their helicopter in the area and determine whether anyone survived the crash in the east of the country, said Christope Illemassene, spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the capital city of Kinshasa.
But Air Serv International, the relief group that operated the plane, said an aerial survey has indicated that all the occupants on the Beechcraft 1900 plane died.
The plane was on a routine flight from Kinsasha to the eastern city of Goma on Monday, with three stops, Illemassene said.
Air-traffic controllers lost contact with the plane when it approached Bukavu, the last of its three intermediate stops. The weather in the area was stormy at the time, Illemassene said.
Search and rescue crews spotted the plane's debris Tuesday, about 9.4 miles (15 km) northwest of the Bukavu airport, Illemassene said.
"We're anxiously waiting for results from the search and rescue operation," he said. "We're really hoping the peacekeepers are able to land near the site and confirm whether there are any survivors."
Air Serv International, based in the U.S. state of Virginia, is one of several groups that provides transport services to relief organizations in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
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