A Moroccan military transport plane crashed into a mountain today killing 78 people on board.

The Royal Armed Forces C-130 crashed was about to land at the Guelmim military air base.

It was carrying members of the Royal Armed Fores en route from Dakhla, in the disputed Western Sahara, to Kinitra in northern Morocco, and making a stop in Guelmim.

Guelmim is more than 360 miles from the capital Rabat, just north of the Western Sahara and a few dozen miles from the Atlantic Coast.

Morocco took over the mineral-rich Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony, in 1979. The Saharawi people want to establish the region as an independent state.

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