Ukranian Cargo Plane Went Down Shortly After Take-Off

Divers were scouring Tanzania's Lake Victoria Thursday, looking for signs of the crew aboard a Ukranian Ilyushin IL-76 that went down in the water shortly after take-off the day before.

"We still have divers trying to establish whether there are bodies trapped underneath," Zelothe Stephen, the regional police commissioner in the Tanzanian lakeside town of Mwanza, said at a lakeside news conference Thursday morning. The IL-76 (file photo of type, below) belonged to Air Transport Incorporated, based in the Ukraine. Eight crew members were aboard.

"We are launching an operation to pull out the wreckage. We don't see any sign of life," Daniel Ole Njoolay, a regional commissioner from Mwanza, told reporters. Both he and Stephen were quoted by the South African Independent.

"It crashed into the lake immediately after the takeoff. It happened at [2307] at night," Njoolay told reporters. "Much of the body is sunk but the wings are floating. We can see the wreckage, it's about two kilometers from shore."

It was the second time in a single week a commercial aircraft went down in Lake Victoria. Last week, an Ethiopian Airlines cargo flight crashed into the water on approach to Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

FMI: www.tcaa.go.tz