May Allah have mercy on the souls of the dead.
Jet Crash in Algeria Kills 102 Aboard
An Air Algerie passenger jet, one of its engines ablaze, crashed shortly after takeoff deep in the Sahara Desert on Thursday, killing 102 people on board, the airline said. One person survived. The Boeing 737, flight 6289, crashed after taking off from Tamanrasset bound for the Algerian capital, Algiers, 1,000 miles to the north. Terrorism was not suspected, said an airline spokesman, Hamid Hamdi. “There was a mechanical problem on takeoff,” he said. “There is no element that leads us to think there was a terrorist attack.” Witnesses at the Tamanrasset airport and airline officials said one of the plane’s two jet engines caught fire as it was taking off.