Air Algerie crash confirmed after wreckage found near border to Burkina Faso. Five Canadians on board

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OUAGADOUGO, Burkina Faso — An Air Algerie jetliner carrying 116 people — including five Canadians — crashed Thursday in a rainstorm over restive Mali, and its wreckage was found near the border of neighbouring Burkina Faso. It was the third major international aviation disaster in a week.

The plane, owned by Spanish company Swiftair and leased by Algeria’s flagship carrier, disappeared from radar screens less than an hour after takeoff, en route from Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou to Algiers.

French fighter jets, UN peacekeepers and others hunted for signs of wreckage of the MD-83 plane in the remote region, where scattered separatist violence may hamper an eventual investigation into what happened.

The wreckage was found about 50 kilometres from the border of Burkina Faso near the village of Boulikessi in Mali, a Burkina Faso presidential aide said.

“We sent men with the agreement of the Mali government to the site and they found the wreckage of the plane with the help of the inhabitants of the area,” said Gen. Gilbert Diendere, a close aide to Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore and head of the crisis committee set up to investigate the flight.

“They found human remains and the wreckage of the plane totally burnt and scattered,” he said.

He told The Associated Press that rescuers went to the area after they had heard from a resident that he saw the plane go down 80 kilometres (southwest of Malian town of Gossi. Burkina Faso’s government spokesman said the country will observe 48 hours of mourning.

Malian state television also said the wreckage was found in the village of Boulikessi and was found by a helicopter from Burkina Faso. Algeria’s transport minister also said the plane’s remains had apparently been found. French officials could not confirm the discovery late Thursday night.

“We found the plane by accident” near Boulikessi, said Sidi Ould Brahim, a Tuareg separatist who travelled Thursday from Mali to a refugee camp for Malians in Burkina Faso. “The plane was burned, there were traces of rain on the plane, and bodies were torn apart,” he told The Associated Press.

Families from France to Canada and beyond had been waiting anxiously for signs of Flight 5017 and their loved ones aboard. Nearly half of the passengers were French, many en route home from Africa.

“Everything allows us to believe this plane crashed in Mali,” French President Francois Hollande said Thursday night after an emergency meeting in Paris. He said the crew changed its flight path because of “particularly difficult weather conditions.”

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, his face drawn and voice sombre, told reporters, “If this catastrophe is confirmed, it would be a major tragedy that hits our entire nation, and many others.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a statement saying he was saddened at news of the crash.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the passengers and crew who lost their lives in this tragedy,” he said in the statement, adding that it was confirmed Canadians are among the victims.

Tweets from the account of Lynne Yelich, Canada’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, said consular officials are ready to provide assistance.

Radio-Canada reported Thursday that a woman from Sherbrooke, Que., was on board. The CBC’s French-language service said Isabelle Prevost’s family confirmed the 35-year-old was one of the passengers.

The network quoted her partner, who was not identified in the report, as saying that their three children were meant to be travelling with her but that it was decided they should stay with him.

Radio-Canada also quoted Burkina Faso native Mamadou Zoungrana, who works as a technologist at the Papineau Hospital in Gatineau,Que., as saying that his wife and their two sons, aged six and 13, were on the flight. CBC reported they are not Canadian citizens.

Before the plane vanished, the pilots sent a final message to ask Niger air control to change its route because of heavy rain, Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said.

French forces, who have been in Mali since January 2013 to rout al-Qaida-linked extremists who had controlled the north, searched for the plane, alongside the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Mali, known as MINUSMA.

Algerian Transport Minister Omar Ghoul, whose country’s planes were also searching for wreckage, described it as a “serious and delicate affair.”

The vast deserts and mountains of northern Mali fell under control of ethnic Tuareg separatists and then al-Qaida-linked Islamic extremists after a military coup in 2012.