Plane crash in Kenya kills 12 American tourists, 2 pilots

NAIROBI, Kenya -- A chartered aircraft carrying three families to a game reserve plowed into Mount Kenya, killing all 12 American tourists and the two South African pilots on board, officials said Sunday.

The twin-engine Fairchild turboprop hit Point Lenana, the third-highest peak on Africa's second-highest mountain, as a cloudy sky was beginning to clear just before sunset Saturday, said Bongo Woodley, senior Kenya Wildlife Service warden in charge of Mount Kenya National Park.

"We heard it immediately, and I have flown over the site and seen the crash, and there do not appear to be any survivors," Woodley said by telephone from the park headquarters in Naro Moru, 75 miles north of Nairobi.

Rangers based below the crash site found no survivors when they visited the site late Saturday but recovered eight American passports, Woodley said.

The 12 Americans belonged to three families, said Isaiya Kabira, a spokesman for President Mwai Kibaki. Six members of one were on the flight as well as three members from each of the two other families. Authorities would not release their names or hometowns.

Senior police and civil aviation officials on Sunday visited the area where the plane slammed into the mountain at 16,000 feet, but could not reach certain parts of the site because of bad weather and difficult terrain, Kabira said.

Another attempt to recover the bodies was planned for today.

Anne Gaines-Burrill, a director of Air-2000, a South African charter company, said their Fairchild SW-4 aircraft bearing registration number ZSOYI and carrying two South African pilots departed from Lanseria airport near Johannesburg at 6 a.m. Saturday and landed at Nairobi's Wilson Airport about 2 p.m.

About 4 p.m., the plane took off for Buffalo Springs National Reserve, where it was expected to leave the passengers at an airstrip, officials said. Buffalo Springs is 135 miles north of Nairobi.

The aircraft had been expected back at Wilson at 6 p.m. Saturday, Gaines-Burrill said.

It wasn't clear where the Americans were to go after getting off at Buffalo Springs.