20 Lebanese nationals were on-board crashed Air Algerian plane

The Lebanese Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement saying that the Lebanese embassy in Abidjan informed it that 20 Lebanese were onboard the ill-fated plane.

Foreign Minister Jebran Bassil told reporters on Thursday evening that a delegation from his ministry along with officials from General Security and the Higher Relief Committee will fly to Mali to inspect the crash site.

An official source in Lebanon told AFP that among the Lebanese on-board of the AH5017 flight were three couples with 10 children.

"I can confirm that it has crashed," an Algerian official told Reuters, declining to give details of where the plane was or what caused the accident.

Three of the Lebanese passengers were identified as Fadi Rustom and Joseph Hajj from Aintoura in Metn and Omar Ballan from the Kesrouan town of Ghazir.

A Lebanese diplomatic source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said families from south Lebanon were also on-board the plane, including Randa Bassma Daher and her children, Mounji Hasan and his family and Mohammad Akhdar.

According to the source Fadi Rustom and Joseph al-Hajj were long-term residents of Burkina Faso who own businesses there.

"They were coming here for the Eid [al-Fitr] break," an emotional Hajjeh Amineh Daher, the sister-in-law of Randa Daher, told The Daily Star. "We haven't seen them in the past four years," she added, at her home in the south Lebanon village of Srifa.

Randa Daher was on board of the AH 5017 plane with her kids Ali 17, Salah 15 and Shaymaa 5.

The consulate source said there were no more than a thousand Lebanese living in the Burkina Faso capital, Ouagadougou, adding that Algiers was a transit point for Lebanese flying home to Beirut.