A Nigerian has been confirmed to be among the 116 persons on board Air Algerie Flight AH5017 which disappeared from radar about 50 minutes after taking off from Burkina Faso’s capital, Ouagadougou, and was later discovered to have crashed in Tilemsi, Mali.

Air Algerie representative Kara Terki told a news conference that the plane was one Nigerian, whose identity is yet to be disclosed. He said the passenger list also included 50 French, 24 Burkinabe, eight Lebanese, four Algerians, two from Luxembourg, one Belgian, one Swiss, one Cameroonian, one Ukrainian and one Romanian.

The airport from where the plane took off has also reported on its website that Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban president Raul Castro, was onboard the plane.

Terki said that all the passengers on the plane were in transit, either for Europe, the Middle East or Canada.

Reports said Flight AH5017 got into difficulty after taking off from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso. It was reportedly told to change its course to avoid a collision with another plane flying from Algiers to Bamako, the capital of war-torn Mali.

•Photo courtesy Daily Express, UK.