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Bodies of Belarusians killed in Somalia air crash to be brought to Minsk on Friday

An aircraft of the Homyelavia airline with the bodies of 11 Belarusians killed in last week's air crash in Somalia aboard took off from an airport in the United Arab Emirates at 9 a.m. on Friday and was scheduled to land in Minsk at 6 p.m.

The An-12 also carried 10 Belarusian citizens stranded in the war-torn African country after their plane was hit with a projectile on March 9, a representative of the Belarusian embassy in the United Arab Emirates told BelaPAN.

The bodies and the survivals of the previous accident were brought to the United Arab Emirates from Somalia aboard a Russian plane earlier this week.

An IL-76 plane belonging to Belarus' state-run Transaviaexport crashed after taking off from the main airport in the Somali capital Mogadishu on March 23.

The plane is believed to have been shot down by rebels fighting against the Somali government, their Ethiopian military allies and the African Union force since the beginning of 2007.

Transaviaexport had sent the group to Somalia to retrieve equipment from its other plane hit by a ground-fired projectile two weeks before.

That plane was on a flight from Uganda in the framework of an African Union peacekeeping mission under the aegis of the UN Security Council. The crew managed to land the aircraft and all those aboard - nine Belarusians and six Ugandans - survived the accident. However, the aircraft was damaged beyond repair.