No Canadians were among the dead when a plane chartered by a Canadian gold mining company crashed in Mauritania on Thursday, killing seven people.
Kinross Gold's vice president of corporate communications Steve Mitchell confirmed to CTV News on Thursday that there were no Kinross employees or Canadians on the military plane when it went down.
Mitchell spoke to CTV News from Toronto, where Kinross is based.
The aircraft was carrying three military crew members, two customs officials and two civilian passengers. All were killed in the crash.
It appeared as though the plane caught fire shortly after taking off from an airstrip in Nouakchott -- Mauritania's capital and the largest city in the West African country.
The pilot attempted to return to the runway, but was unable to reach it.
The plane's intended destination was the Tasiast gold mine, located about 200 kilometres north of the capital.
Mauritania sits on Africa's Atlantic coast and is bordered by Morocco to the north and Senegal to the south.
The country's geography is more than 99 per cent desert, but the nation is rich in natural resources such as iron ore, gold and offshore oil.
