Congo airline says most of passengers survived crash

KINSHASA (Reuters) - Congolese airline Hewa Bora said most of the 79 passengers on board its plane which crashed on Tuesday onto a crowded market district in the eastern town of Goma had survived the accident.

"We have managed to save most of the passengers who have been evacuated to hospitals," Dirk Cramers, a director of the airline, told Reuters. He said all of the seven crew members had also survived.

Julien Paluku, the governor of North Kivu where Goma is located, told Reuters that 19 bodies had been recovered so far and 76 injured people were being treated in local hospitals.

"The plane fell on a populated district," Paluku said, adding rescue teams were still working.

Witnesses and officials earlier said more than 70 people had been killed when the McDonnell Douglas DC-9 slewed into the teeming market district of Birere, a warren of single-storey shops and stalls which were crowded at that time of day.

(Reporting by Lubunga Bya'Ombe; Writing by Nick Tattersall)