NEWS UPDATE: Air Algerie aircraft confirmed as "crashed" says aviation officials

The Air Algerie flight from Burkina Faso to Algiers disappeared from radar early this morning.

The wreckage of the aircraft has now been found and the Flight Data Recorders recovered. There were no survivors among the 166 passengers on board. It is beleived there was severe storms in the area of the crash site.

Air navigation services lost track of the MD83 after 0155 GMT, or 50 minutes after takeoff, the agency said. That means that Flight AH5017 had been missing for hours before the news was made public.

"In keeping with procedures, Air Algerie has launched its emergency plan," the agency quoted the airline as saying.

The flight path of the aircraft – chartered fromy Spanish airline SwiftAir - from Ouagadougou, the capital of the west African nation of Burkina Faso, to Algiers was not immediately clear.

Ougadougou is in a nearly straight line south of Algiers, passing over Mali where unrest continues in the north.

However, Associated Press quoted a senior French official said it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the fights have shoulder-fired weapons which could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.

Meanwhile Agence France Press said that there were reports that the aircraft was close to the Algerian border when it was diverted to avoid bad weather and potential collision.