Five dead as plane burns on Egypt runway

Five crew on board a Ukrainian cargo plane were killed on Friday when their plane caught fire while taking off from an airport in the southern Egyptian city of Luxor, airport officials said.

The aircraft, a Russian-made Antonov 12, had arrived from Tanzania to refuel en route to the Ukraine.

Firefighters and rescue workers raced to the scene but were unable to save the crew, an official said.

Other traffic at the airport was not disrupted, he added. State-news agency MENA reported that Civil Aviation Minister Samir Faraj had arrived at Luxor airport with a team of experts to investigate the cause of the accident.

It was the deadliest aviation disaster in Egypt since January 2004, when a Boeing 737 carrying French tourists plunged into the Red Sea after taking off from the resort Sharm el-Sheikh, killing all 148 people on board.