The wreckage of Air Algérie flight AH5017 from Burkina Faso to Algeria, which disappeared from radar with 116 people on board, has been discovered in Tilemsi, Mali, it was claimed on Thursday. However, searches were later said to be continuing. 
 
 The French media is quoting Zoheir Houaoui of Air Algérie as saying the plane was carrying 50 French passengers, six Algerians, one Malian, one Belgian, two from Luxembourg, five Canadians, one from Cameroon, four Germans, one Nigerian, eight Lebanese, one Romanian, 24 from Burkino Faso and six so far unidentified passengers. The six crew members – two pilots and four stewards – were all Spanish. 
 
 The French president, François Hollande, has called an emergency meeting with the prime minister, Manuel Valls, foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, as well as the interior and the transport ministers, for 5pm French time. 
 
 Air traffic controllers lost contact with the Swiftair-owned MD-83 about 50 minutes after takeoff at 1.17am local time (0117 GMT), said an Algerian aviation official. The news was not made public until several hours after the flight's scheduled 5.10am arrival in Algiers, by which time officials from Algeria, Burkina Faso and France had issued conflicting details. 
 
 The flight path of the plane from Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, was not immediately clear. The city is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali, where unrest continues. Rebels who have seized the northern fringe of Mali do not have weapons capable of bringing down a commercial jet at cruising altitude, a Malian official told the Guardian. "What they have is shoulder-fired weapons, and rocket-propelled grenades." 
 
 The flight had asked to change route at 1.38am because of a storm, Burkina Faso's transport authorities said. Powerful sandstorms are frequent throughout the Sahara's northern belt around this time of year. Aviation officials in Burkina said they had handed the flight to a control tower in Niger's capital, Niamey, at 1.38am, and that last contact was at about 4.30am. That contradicted an Algerian aviation official, who said the last contact was at 0155 GMT when the plane was flying over Gao, Mali. 
 
 Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, the president of Mali, said on Thursday night that the wreckage had been spotted between Aguelhoc and Kidal but did not give details. Two French Mirage-2000 planes were searching the largely inaccessible region of Gao in northern Mali. 
 
 Hollande said: "The search will go on for as long as necessary and everything will be done to find this aircraft." 
 
 According to the Spanish sports daily Marca, the SwiftAir aircraft was used as the official aircraft for Real Madrid FC between 2007 and 2009. 
 
 The French radio station Europe 1 suggested it had been told the number of French on board could be as high as 80. The French transport ministry would only confirm "a number" of French people were on the plane. Of the French passengers, 22 were due to transfer to flights to Paris or Marseilles after landing at Algiers. 
 
 French troops are in Mali as part of the ongoing Operation Serval, which started at the beginning of last year and is aimed at ousting Islamist militants in the north of the country. 
 
 Hollande was due to fly to the French Indian Ocean island of Réunion on Thursday afternoon, but delayed his flight to follow developments. 
 
 • This article was amended on 24 July 2014 to reflect the fact that the claim that the plane's wreckage had been discovered was later cast into doubt. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Alex Duval-Smith in Mali says there was "very bad weather" in the area, as well as "armed groups" 
 
 A passenger plane carrying 116 people is feared to have crashed on a flight from Burkina Faso to the Algerian capital Algiers. 
 
 Contact with the Air Algerie flight was lost over the Sahara as it crossed Mali in bad weather, officials said. 
 
 French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the plane, which has 51 French citizens aboard, "probably crashed". 
 
 There have been reports of wreckage being found but they are in locations up to 400km (250 miles) apart. 
 
 However, the French military, which is leading the search operation in the desert, has not confirmed finding any remains of the plane. 
 
 Two UN helicopter crews who took part in the search also failed to locate wreckage before nightfall. 
 
 Contact with Flight AH 5017, chartered from Spanish airline Swiftair, was lost about 50 minutes after take-off from Ouagadougou, Air Algerie said. 
 
 The pilot had contacted Niger's control tower in Niamey to change course because of a sandstorm, officials say. 
 
 BBC West Africa correspondent Thomas Fessy says the route is well used by French travellers. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Air Algerie spokesperson Houari Zuhair confirms "contact was lost" 
 
 Speaking in Paris, Mr Fabius said: "Despite intensive search efforts no trace of the aircraft has yet been found. The plane probably crashed." 
 
 He said two French Mirage fighter planes were scouring the area. 
 
 French President Francois Hollande cancelled a planned visit overseas and said every effort was being made to find the plane. 
 
 "The search will take as long as needed," he told reporters. 
 
 Earlier, an Algerian official told Reuters that the plane had crashed, but gave no further details. 
 
 France's civil aviation body said crisis centres had been set up at airports in Paris and Marseille. 
 
 Burkina Faso authorities said the passenger list comprised 27 people from Burkina Faso, 51 French, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, two from Luxembourg, five Canadians, four Germans, one Cameroonian, one Belgian, one Egyptian, one Ukrainian, one Swiss, one Nigerian and one Malian. 
 
 The six crew members are Spanish, according to the Spanish pilots' union. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption A crisis centre has been set up in Charles de Gaulle airport near Paris 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The passenger plane had taken off from Ouagadougou airport in Burkina Faso 
 
 UN troops in Mali say they understand the plane came down between Gao and Tessalit, the BBC's Alex Duval Smith in the Malian capital Bamako reports. 
 
 She says the search area is vast, with few roads, and there is rebel activity. Added to that, sandstorms make visibility in the Sahara poor for at least a day, she adds. 
 
 "In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," Air Algerie officials, quoted by APS news agency (in French), said. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The BBC's Alex Duval Smith reports on the sandstorms which have been affecting the area where the plane disappeared 
 
 Algerian Prime Minister Abdelmalek Sellal reportedly told Algerian radio: "The plane disappeared at Gao (in Mali), 500km (300 miles) from the Algerian border." 
 
 Burkina Faso Transport Minister Jean Bertin Ouedraogo said the plane sent its last message at around 01:30 GMT, asking air traffic controllers in Niger to change its route because of bad weather. 
 
 In a statement (in Spanish), Swiftair said that the aircraft was a McDonnell Douglas MD-83 and that they were unable to establish contact with it. 
 
 An Algerian official had previously told Reuters that the plane was an Airbus A320. 
 
 An unnamed Air Algerie company source, speaking to AFP news agency, said: "The plane was not far from the Algerian frontier when the crew was asked to make a detour because of poor visibility and to prevent the risk of collision with another aircraft on the Algiers-Bamako route." 
 
 "Contact was lost after the change of course." 
 
 Flight AH 5017 flies the Ouagadougou-Algiers route four times a week, AFP reported. 
 
 In February a military plane in Algeria crashed, killing 77 people on board. 
 
 The Hercules C-130 crashed into a mountain in Oum al-Bouaghi province, en route to Constantine, in bad weather conditions. Only one person on board survived. 
 
 McDonnell Douglas MD-83 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Chris Yates, aviation analyst, said the aircraft was "relatively elderly" ||||| ALGIERS French warplanes and U.N. helicopters scoured the north of Mali on Thursday for the wreckage of an Air Algerie flight after it crashed carrying 110 passengers, nearly half of them French, from Burkina Faso to Algiers. 
 
 French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said authorities believed flight AH5017 may have encountered bad weather after the pilot requested to change direction shortly after takeoff due to a storm. However, he said no hypothesis had been excluded. 
 
 Officials in Mali and Burkina Faso gave conflicting accounts of locating the crash. 
 
 Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita said wreckage of the flight had been spotted in his country's far north, toward the Algerian border between the towns of Aguelhoc and Kidal. 
 
 However, General Gilbert Diendere, a member of the crisis unit in Burkina Faso, said his team had found remains in southern Mali, 50 km (30 miles) from the Burkinabe border. Local authorities in the nearby town of Gossi also told Reuters the wreckage had been located here. 
 
 In Paris, Fabius said the flight, carrying 51 French nationals, had probably crashed but he said two French Mirage warplanes searching the vast desert area around the northern Malian city of Gao had spotted no wreckage. 
 
 "Despite intensive search efforts, no trace of the aircraft has yet been found," Fabius told journalists. 
 
 An Algerian official, who asked not to be identified, confirmed the flight had crashed but provided no other details. 
 
 French President Francois Hollande cancelled a planned visit to overseas territories and said France -- which has some 1,700 troops stationed in Mali -- would use all military means on the ground to locate the aircraft. 
 
 "The search will take as long as needed," Hollande told reporters. "Everything must be done to find this plane. We cannot identify the causes of what happened." 
 
 The searchers mission is complicated by the vast scale and daunting terrain of Mali. The area where the flight is suspected to have crashed is a sparsely inhabited region of scrubland and desert dunes stretching to the foothills of the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains. 
 
 Much of it lies in the hands of Tuareg separatist rebels, who rose up against the government in early 2012, triggering an Islamist revolt that briefly seized control of northern Mali. 
 
 The Malian government has only a weak presence in the region and relies on French and U.N. peacekeepers for aircraft and logistical support. 
 
 Another plane crash is likely to add to nerves over flying after a Malaysia Airlines plane was downed over Ukraine last week, a TransAsia Airways crashed off Taiwan during a thunderstorm on Wednesday and airlines temporarily cancelled flights into Tel Aviv due to the conflict in Gaza. 
 
 FRENCH PASSENGERS Algeria's state news agency APS said authorities lost contact with flight AH5017 an hour after it took off from Burkina Faso, but other officials gave differing accounts of the times of contact. 
 
 Swiftair, the private Spanish company that owns the plane, confirmed it had lost contact with the MD-83 operated by Air Algerie, which it said was carrying 110 passengers and six crew. 
 
 A spokeswoman for SEPLA, Spain's pilots union, said the six crew were from Spain. She could not give any further details. 
 
 It said it took off from Burkina Faso at 0117 GMT and was due to land at 0510 GMT but never reached its destination. 
 
 An Algerian aviation official said the last contact Algerian authorities had with the missing Air Algerie aircraft was at 0155 GMT when it was flying over Gao, Mali. Burkina Faso officials said the flight asked the control center in Niamey, Niger, to change route at 0138 GMT because of a storm in the Sahara. 
 
 Burkina Faso authorities said the passenger list comprised 27 Burkinabe, 51 French, eight Lebanese, six Algerians, two from Luxembourg, five Canadians, four Germans, one Cameroonian, one Belgian, one Egyptian, one Ukranian, one Swiss, one Nigerian and one Malian. 
 
 The Lebanese Foreign Ministry said its embassy in Abidjan estimated the number of Lebanese citizens on the flight was at least 20. Some of these may have dual nationality. 
 
 "We don't know anything yet. We have just heard from the news that the plane went missing," said Amina Daher, whose sister-in-line Randa was traveling on the plane with her three children, returning to Beirut to celebrate the Muslim religious festival of Eid El-Fitr with her family. 
 
 RELATIVELY CLEAN RECORD 
 
 The MD-83 is part of the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 family of twin-engined jets that entered service in 1980. A total of 265 of the MD-83 model were delivered before McDonnell Douglas, by then part of Boeing, halted production in 1999. 
 
 "Boeing is aware of the report. We are awaiting additional information," a spokesman for the U.S. planemaker said. 
 
 According to the Ascend Fleets database held by British-based Flightglobal, there are 187 MD-83s still in operation, of which 80 percent are being flown in the United States. 
 
 The aircraft's two engines are made by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies. 
 
 Swiftair has a relatively clean safety record, with five accidents since 1977, two of which caused a total of eight deaths, according to the Washington-based Flight Safety Foundation. 
 
 Air Algerie's last major accident was in 2003 when one of its planes crashed shortly after take-off from the southern city of Tamanrasset, killing 102 people. In February this year, 77 people died when an Algerian military transport plane crashed into a mountain in eastern Algeria. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Patrick Markey, Daniel Flynn, David Lewis, Mathieu Bonkoungou, Emma Farge, Julien Toyer, Tracy Rucinski, Laila Bassam, Marine Pennetier, John Irish and Tim Hepher; Writing by Patrick Markey; Editing by Alison Williams and Sonya Hepinstall)
– A flight operated by Air Algerie and carrying 116 people from Burkina Faso to Algeria's capital disappeared from radar early today, and an Algerian aviation official now tells Reuters the plane has crashed, though no further details were given. Air navigation services lost track of the Swiftair MD-83 about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, at 1:55am GMT (9:55pm Eastern last night), the official Algerian news agency says. That means that Flight 5017 had been missing for hours before the news was made public. Swiftair, a private Spanish airline, confirms it has not been possible to make contact with the plane. Swiftair says the plane carrying 110 passengers and six crew left Burkina Faso for Algiers at 1:17am GMT today, but had not arrived at the scheduled time of 5:10am GMT. But, as Reuters puts it, conflicting information has been given about timing, "adding to confusion about the fate of the flight and where it might be." The plane was over Gao, Mali, when contact was lost, and a diplomat in Mali says there was a powerful sandstorm overnight in the north part of the country, over which the plane would likely have flown. The Burkina Faso transport minister says the flight asked to change course at 1:38am GMT because of a storm, according to Reuters.