United Nations Radio

A humanitarian cargo plane with 15 passengers and 2 crew members crashed on Monday near Bukavu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

The plane commissioned from a US company specializing in humanitarian air transport, was on a routine flight from the capital Kinshasa to the eastern city of Goma.

A spokesman for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Christopher Illemassen, says the UN peacekeeping mission in the country, MONUC, launched a search and rescue operation Tuesday morning and located the crash site at about 15 kilometers from the Bukavu air strip.

"The terrain is very rough. The crash site is inaccessible. Helicopters have been hovering but haven't been able to land on the site or anywhere near. "

Since the airlift rescue operation is not working, Mr. Illemassen says a ground operation would have to be launched to determine if any of the 17 people on board survived the crash.

Reporting for UN Radio, I'm Bissera Kostova.

(duration: 59")