At least six of the 85 people on board — including the two pilots and two children — survived the crash of the Hewa Bora Airways passenger jet, the local governor said. It was believed other survivors may also have been pulled out.

A Congolese Red Cross official said the death toll was expected to rise, but the recovery of bodies was made more difficult by the fires raging on the ground, where an undetermined number of people may also have been killed.

More than 45 people were injured in the crash, the latest aviation disaster to hit Congo, a vast central African state the size of western Europe that is still recovering from a war and has one of the world’s worst air safety records.

The Hewa Bora McDonnell Douglas DC-9 was taking off on a flight to the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, when it crashed into the teeming market district of Birere, a warren of single-story shops and stalls which were crowded at that time of day.

Officials had first identified the aircraft as a Boeing 727.

“I was in my seat with my seat belt fastened,” said one of the survivors, Frederic Katemo, 51, who said he scrambled out through the cockpit. “There was a big crash. We jumped up and found our way out. We could feel the fire behind us.”

He suffered only singed hair and a bruised leg.

The nose and cockpit section of the airliner was left largely intact, jutting into the debris of crushed stalls and shattered houses in a street of the Birere district.

Residents heard a big explosion, which flattened at least one building, scattering bricks and masonry, and set several more on fire. A large plume of smoke rose from the crash site.

“Half of the plane has broken off,” said a witness at the crash scene who did not give a name. “There is a fire towards the back. People are coming with buckets of water to put out the fire. The U.N. is here trying to keep back the crowds.”

Julien Paluku, the governor of North Kivu province, where Goma is the capital, said there were 79 passengers and six crew members on board. “Six people have been saved, two pilots and four passengers including two children,” he said.

Congolese police and United Nations soldiers, members of the United Nations peacekeeping contingent in Congo, struggled to keep back hordes of onlookers who swarmed over the crash site.

Goma airport, located within sight of a nearby volcano, has suffered several accidents in the past, with planes overshooting the runway and endangering homes built up near the airport.

“We have been waiting for something like this to happen,” said Serge Ukundji, a conservationist with the Frankfurt Zoological Society who lives in Goma. “There have been lots of accidents just behind here at the airport.”. He said he saw the pilot and co-pilot dragged alive from the crashed plane.

Hewa Bora Airways officials were not immediately available for comment.

Last week, the European Union added Congo’s Hewa Bora Airways to a list of aviation companies banned from flying in the 27-nation bloc over safety concerns.

There were eight plane crashes in Democratic Republic of Congo last year, according to the Geneva-based Aircraft Crashes Record Office. This included one in the capital Kinshasa in which an Antonov 26 plunged into a crowded neighborhood, killing more than 50 people.

The International Air Transport Association says the air accident rate in Africa is six times worse than in the rest of the world and calls this an “embarrassment.”

Aviation safety experts single out Democratic Republic of Congo, which is still struggling to recover from a devastating 1998-2003 war, as one of the worst offenders. The huge country only has a few hundred miles of paved roads.

Passengers and cargo are packed onto aging planes, often Soviet-built, which fly to multiple remote destinations across the former Belgian colony.