An Algerian plane has crashed killing 102 passengers and crew near Tamanrasset deep in the Sahara desert.
Authorities at Algiers and Tamanrasset airports said one passenger had survived the accident but was seriously wounded.
'Only one passenger survived with serious wounds. All the other 97 passengers were killed along with six crew members - two pilots and four flight attendants,' said a senior official at Algiers airport.
Officials said seven French passengers were among the dead.
This is the worst air accident in Algeria since the North African country gained independence from France 41 years ago.
Quoting rescue workers on the scene, the official news agency APS said a Boeing 737-200 of the state-owned national airline Air Algérie crashed shortly after take-off from Tamanrasset airport at 3.45 pm local time.
It had been heading for the capital Algiers on the Mediterranean coast in the north.
Tamanrasset is in the middle of the Sahara in the far south, 1,920 km from Algiers.
The area, noted for its prehistoric cave paintings, attracts limited tourism, mainly from France and Germany, despite an Islamic insurgency, which has racked Algeria for the past decade.
Air Algérie declined to comment further.
APS said the government had set up a crisis committee to investigate the 'technical causes of the accident', a wording suggesting authorities ruled out a deliberate attack.
Interior Minister Noureddine Zerhouni and Transport Minister Abdelmalek Sellal flew to Tamanrasset to oversee the rescue, it said.
