Rebel-Fired Missile Hits Plane, Angola Says; 42 Killed in Crash

Forty-two people died when a military transport plane crash-landed in Angola after being hit by a rebel-fired missile, the Marxist Angolan government said Tuesday.

Military officials quoted by Angop, the official Angolan news agency monitored in Lisbon, blamed the attack on rebels from the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola.

However, a spokesman for the pro-Western rebels, reached in London, maintained that the government’s own forces mistakenly shot down the Soviet-built, twin-engine Antonov 26.

Both Angop and the Portuguese news agency, Lusa, quoted unidentified sources as saying a surface-to-air missile struck the plane Sunday as it flew over Angola’s eastern Moxico province, knocking out an engine and forcing it to crash-land.

Only six of the 48 people aboard survived the landing near the town of Cazombo, the agencies said.

The plane was carrying a delegation of regional officials from Luena to Cazombo, according to a military official. Angop said the dead included the Cazombo municipal commissioner, three soldiers and three members of the plane’s crew.

“This is more than a (simple) violation of the cease-fire,” an Angolan army source told Lusa, hinting that the incident could have grave consequences for the fragile peace process begun last month during an 18-nation African summit in neighboring Zaire.