An aircraft with 55 people on board crashed on a beach shortly after taking off from Aden Adde International Airport in Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, on Tuesday. There were no casualties, officials from the country's Civil Aviation Authority (SCAA) reported. The aircraft, a Fokker 50 of the Somali airline Starsky Airline, apparently suffered a technical failure minutes after takeoff. The crew attempted to return to the airport but veered off the runway during landing and ended up on a nearby beach on the Indian Ocean. The director of the SCAA, Ahmed Moalim Hassan, confirmed that all passengers and crew were safely evacuated with no loss of life, according to the Somali National News Agency (SONNA). In videos published by local media, the plane, which was heading to Galkayo, the capital of the Mudug region (north-central), is seen stranded on the beach as emergency services evacuate the occupants. The authorities have launched an investigation to determine the cause of the accident. In July of last year, five Ugandan soldiers from the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM) died in a helicopter crash at the same airport.
