BEIRUT — A military plane crash in a remote mountainous region of Morocco killed at least 78 people and seriously injured three Tuesday, according to the North African nation’s official news agency.
The C-130 transport plane carried 60 soldiers, nine crew members and a dozen civilians and was preparing to land at an airport near the border with the disputed region of Western Sahara, according to local media reports. The wounded were taken to a military hospital in the nearby town of Guelmim while a search of the site continued, the Maghreb Arabe Presse agency reported.
Video footage broadcast on Arab television appeared to show the blackened remains of the plane across the side of a mountain.
According to a statement by Morocco’s Royal Armed Forces, bad weather caused the crash.
The news agency said the plane was transporting troops either to or from Laayoune and Dakhla, both cities in Western Sahara, a sparsely populated desert coastal territory 100 miles south of the crash site.
The vast coastal region has been the site of a 36-year insurgency waged by Polisario separatists seeking autonomy from Morocco, which claims the territory as its own.
