3 feared dead as small plane crashes in Lebanon

BEIRUT: A small training aircrat with three people onboard crashed on Thursday in Lebanon’s mountainous Keserwan district, north of the capital Beirut, aviation sources said.

Initial reports suggested the pilot and two passengers were killed, the sources said.

The Cessna 172 plane belonged to flight training firm Open Sky Aviation and had taken off from Beirut airport at 1.30pm local time before crashing 20 minutes later in the village of Ghosta.

“It was very foggy in the area. The airplane hit rocks above a house,” Ziad Maalouf, who was in the area and heard the crash, said. “Ater hearing the bang we ran out and we saw the remains of people.”

Open Sky could not immediately be reached for comment.

The minister of public works was at the airport and an official statement was expected soon.

Separately, Lebanon’s most senior Christian cleric said on Thursday he hoped for an improvement in ties with Saudi Arabia.

“Saudi Arabia has not violated Lebanon’s sovereignty or its independence, it has not violated its borders or involved it in wars,” Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Al Rai said in a speech at an event celebrating 100 years of Saudi relations with the church.

Rai is a harsh critic of the Hizbollah.

The centennial, which was atended by Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Lebanon Waleed Al Bukhari, is taking place on the same day as the US and French envoys to Lebanon jointly visit Riyadh to discuss support for the troubled country.

Without responding directly to the patriarch’s plea for beter ties, Bukhari expressed the hope that Lebanon’s squabbling politicians can focus on the national interest “to face the challenges the country is facing.”

The patriarch traditionally wields influence in Lebanon as head of the Maronite church, a group from which the president must be drawn under a sectarian power-sharing system.

Lebanon’s caretaker premier Hassan Diab on Tuesday urged donors to “save” the country, despite the fact it has no formal government, as it struggles through a dire economic crisis.