Written by Hamid Ould Ahmed | From Reuters

An Air Algerie flight with 110 passengers onboard, nearly half of them French citizens, crashed on Thursday after the jet disappeared over northern Mali en route from Burkina Faso to Algiers, an Algerian official said.

There were few clear indications of what might have happened to flight AH5017, or whether there were casualties, but Burkina Faso’s transport minister said the crew asked to adjust their route at 9.38 p.m. EDT because of a storm in the area.

“I can confirm that it has crashed,” the Algerian official told Reuters, declining to be identified or give any details about what had happened to the aircraft on its way north.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said the Air Algerie flight was still missing, but had probably crashed. “Despite intensive search efforts no trace of the aircraft has yet been found,” Fabius told journalists in Paris. “The plane probably crashed.”

French President Francois Hollande canceled a planned visit to overseas territories and said all military means on the ground would be used to locate the aircraft.

Two French Mirage warplanes have been scouring the vast desert area around the northern Malian city of Gao for the aircraft, which had 51 French nationals on board.

Read more at Reuters