NAIROBI: Four people were killed when a cargo plane crashed shortly after takeoff at the international airport in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, a police official said Wednesday.
The Fokker 50 aircraft transporting the mild stimulant known as Khat to the Somali capital, Mogadishu, crashed into a commercial building after taking off from Jomo Kenyatta International Airport early Wednesday, said Joseph Ngisa, the airport’s head of police investigations.
Preliminary investigations found the plane was flying low after takeoff and might have hit an electrical pole before crashing in the Embakasi area of the city, Ngisa said. The plane took off at 4:15 a.m. and crashed two minutes later after radioing the control tower to say the plane didn’t gain height, he said.
No one on the ground was harmed, and the four bodies of those in the plane were recovered, Ngisa said.
The Kenya National Disaster Operation Center said on Twitter that all the victims were male, and they included the flight engineer as well the pilot and two crew members.
Khat is popular in parts of the Middle East and Africa and with Somali nationals in the diaspora but it’s classified as a dangerous narcotic in the United States. Users chew the leaf, producing a mild high.
The UK government recently banned Khat saying the country is at a serious risk of becoming a regional hub and transit point for illegal Khat trafficking to the Netherlands.
4 dead as cargo plane crashes in Kenyan capital
4 dead as cargo plane crashes in Kenyan capital
Trump ‘very disappointed’ with UK’s Starmer for blocking use of air bases, Telegraph says
- UK PM then said bases could be used in “defensive” operations
- Trump says it took “too long” for Starmer to change his mind
LONDON: Donald Trump said he was “very disappointed” with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for not allowing the US to use the Diego Garcia air base to carry out strikes on Iran, the Daily Telegraph quoted the US president as saying in an interview.
Britain had reportedly initially denied the US permission to conduct air strikes from its bases, but on Sunday evening Starmer said he was accepting a request for their use in any “defensive” strikes the US wanted to make against Iranian targets.
In an interview published on Monday Trump told the British newspaper that it took “too long” for Starmer to change his mind.
“That’s probably never happened between our countries before,” he told the Telegraph, adding: “It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”
Trump said Starmer should have approved from the get-go the American use of Diego Garcia — a strategically important US-UK air base in the Indian Ocean — saying Iran was responsible for killing “a lot of people from your country.”
Britain was not involved in the joint US-Israel air strikes on Iran that killed the country’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Saturday.
Since attacks on Iran started on Saturday, Iran has been targeting Gulf countries with missiles, and on Sunday an Iranian-made drone hit Britain’s RAF Akrotiri base in Cyprus, causing limited damage and no casualties.
Trump said it was “useful” that the US would now be able to launch operations from Diego Garcia, as he also criticized a deal Starmer has made over the sovereignty of the Chagos Islands, where Diego Garcia is based.
