Airplane Crash Memorial in the Middle of Sahara

UTA Flight 772 was a scheduled flight operating from Brazzaville in the People's Republic of Congo to Paris in France. On Tuesday, September 19th, 1989, six Libyan terrorists boarded the plane DC-10 and ignited a suitcase bomb on its way to Paris from Brazzaville. UTA Flight 772 broke up over the Sahara Desert near the towns of Bilma and Ténéré in Niger. All 155 passengers and 15 crew members died. On the 18th anniversary of the disaster, families of the victims gathered at the crash site to build a memorial. Lying in the middle of the Sahara, it is one of the least accessible memorial in the world.



The memorial consist of a life-sized silhouette of the aircraft created using dark stones set into the sand. The silhouette lies inside a circle more than 200ft in diameter. Surrounding this circle are 170 broken mirrors, representing those who died, and arrows marking the points of the compass. At the northern point, part of the right wing of the actual DC-10 has been erected as a monument, with a plaque commemorating the victims.

Due to the remote resting place of the wreck, the wreckage is still scattered around the area. Trucks were driven almost 70 km out to transport countless stones to place at the crash site. After two months of grueling work in a brutal climate, the monument was complete. The memorial was financed by a 170-million-dollar compensation fund provided by the Libyan government.

The memorial can be viewed in Google Maps at the coordinates 16°51’53″N 11°57’13″E.

























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