A Mozambican Airlines airplane carrying 28 passengers and six crew members has gone missing en route from Mozambique to Angola, the airline said.

Flight TM470 took off from Maputo at 1456 IST on Friday and had been due to land in the Angolan capital Luanda at 1840 IST, but never arrived, the airline said in a statement.

“Initial information suggests it might have landed in Rundu, in northern Namibia near the border with Botswana and Angola.”

“LAM airlines, aeronautical and airport authorities are trying to establish contact to confirm the information,” it added.

Company spokesman Norberto Mucopa could not confirm the nationalities of the people on board nor the time of the last contact with the Brazilian-produced Embraer 190.

It was not immediately clear if government officials were on board.

Mucopa declined to comment on reports the plane went down in a storm.

“We are busy searching. It’s dark now and it makes our job a bit difficult,” said Olavi Auanga, police commander of the Kavango West region, where the control lost signal with the aircraft.

An aviation officer in the area said on condition of anonymity that unconfirmed reports suggested the airplane may have gone down in the Bwabwata National Park around 200 kilometres east of Rundu.

The 6,100-square-kilometre reserve covers the narrow strip of land formerly known as the Caprivi strip, a sparsely-populated area with wetlands and dense forests.