French Special Forces were on plane that crashed in Ivory Coast, killing 4

A plane crash that killed four off Côte d’Ivoire last week had been chartered by the French military as part of its counterinsurgency mission in West Africa, it has been admitted. Ivorian authorities identified the aircraft as a Ukrainian-made Antonov transport airplane. It reportedly took off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, on last Saturday morning. Shortly afterwards, the aircraft crash-landed in the Atlantic Ocean past Abidjan, one of West Africa’s largest cities, on the southern coast of Côte d’Ivoire. Local officials said the airplane broke in half and immediately caught fire. Of the ten people that were on board, four are reportedly dead; six others are seriously hurt. Reports said that the four dead passengers were all Moldovan nationals. Two other Moldovans and four French nationals were injured.

Late on Saturday, France’s Armed Forces Ministry said that it had chartered the Antonov aircraft, as part of Operation BARKHANE. The military operation began in August of 2014, as part of a broader effort by France to combat what it describes as an Islamist insurgency in the African Sahel region. Currently, French Special Forces are believed to be operational in at least five countries there, namely Niger, Mali, Chad, Mauritania and Burkina Faso. French government sources report that BARKHANE involves 4,000 French troops, commanded from an operational headquarters in N’Djamena, capital of Chad. Close to 1,000 of these troops are believed to be stationed in Burkina, mostly in the capital Ouagadougou. It is also believed that many of the transportation needs of Operation BARKHANE are facilitated by Ukrainian-built Antonovs, flown mostly to and from Abidjan by former Soviet pilots, who sub-contract their services to the French military. That would explain why there were Moldovans implicated in Saturday’s plane crash.

It is reminded that another airplane that had been chartered by the French military crashed in Malta in October of 2016, killing five French citizens. Paris later revealed that they were all employees of the General Directorate for External Security (DGSE), France’s external intelligence agency. The plane was found to have been registered in the United States and operated by a company based in Luxembourg. The French government said on Sunday that it launched an investigation into the cause of Saturday’s crash. There were reports of a storm that hit Abidjan early on the day of the crash, but it is not known whether the storm is in any way connected with the crash.

► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 16 October 2017 | Permalink