Congo plane survivors in shock after mid-air tragedy

The survivors of a mid-air tragedy in which 129 people are believed to have died are being treated for shock.

The passengers were sucked out of a transport plane when its massive rear cargo door burst open at 7,000 feet over the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nine surviving men and women are being treated for minor injuries and psychological trauma at Kinshasa General Hospital.

“They were traumatised and spoke of their baggage flying everywhere,” said Kabamba Mbwebwe, chief doctor at the hospital’s emergency ward.

The Ilyushin 76 is a four-engine transport plane designed that was first used by the Soviet Union in 1974 as a heavy military cargo aircraft.

It is now widely used around the world, particularly in trouble spots in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, as a civilian freighter.

The plane has had a chequered safety record, including at least 45 accidents that resulted in some 393 deaths, according to the Aviation Safety Network Web site, an air safety data base.

Civil-war riven Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries, sprawls across the forests and rivers of central Africa.

Despite a series of peace deals between the government and rebel groups in Congo, fighting has persisted in the sprawling central African nation’s north-east.

However most of the territory between Kinshasa in the west and Lubumbashi in the south-east is held by government forces and there has been no fighting reported there recently.

The conflict has led to more than 2.5 million deaths, aid groups estimate, mostly from strife-related hunger or illness.