All feared dead in Congo wreck of mining executives' plane

Search teams on Monday found the wreckage of a plane carrying Australian mining executives in the jungle of Congo Republic, with all on board feared dead as remains of nine or 10 people were retrieved at the crash site.

The private plane's 11 passengers included Australian mining magnate Ken Talbot, one of Australia's richest men, and five executives from Australian mining firms Sundance Resources, Gindalbie and Western Areas.

"It is unfortunate that we fear that the 11 people on board, all of them have died," information minister Issa Tchiroma Bakary told a news conference in Cameroon's capital Yaounde.

"But for the time being we have retrieved between nine and ten bodies," he added after a search that was launched when the plane went missing over the weekend.

Bakary said the bodies had not yet been identified and that authorities were waiting to study the private CASA C212 prop plane's black box for clues on why it came down 10 km (six miles) inside the Congolese border with Cameroon.