Four days after the Russian air disaster in Egypt that killed 224 people, a Russian-made aircraft—this time a cargo plane—crashed in South Sudan on Wednesday, killing up to 41 people.
Miraculously, a 14-month-year-old African girl was pulled out alive from the wreckage and is now being treated at the Juba teaching hospital in South Sudan, the Daily Express reported.
A second person, an elderly woman, was also pulled out alive from the debris but was later reported to have died.
The baby girl, named Nyloak Tong, was saved by local rescuers who rushed to the scene of the crash near the Nile River. The circumstances on how the baby survived the crash had not been made clear yet.
The infant was travelling with her mother and four brothers, who all died in the disaster, whose cause remains unknown, reports said.
Video footages show local police officers pulling the bodies of men, women and children from the plane wreckage, with debris and cargo strewn along the river bank.
Just like the doomed Russian Metrojet aircraft, the Antonov-12 cargo plane crashed shortly after taking off—just half a mile from the runway in South Sudan's capital Juba.
The official death toll has yet to be confirmed, as conflicting reports have put it between 36 and 41.
South Sudanese government officials said the plane was carrying 18 people, including six crew members. All of the passengers were from South Sudan, while the crew included five Armenians and one Russian, the Express said.
The officials said the higher death toll could be due to some people killed on the ground when the plane crashed.
The head of the Civil Aviation at Juba airport said emergency officials had secured the site of the crash and were "in the stage of recovering bodies and black box."
The Antonov-12 was loaded with foodstuffs and was bound for the South Sudanese town of Paloch in the north of the country when it crashed for still unknown reason.
