Tanzanians on Monday paid an emotional tribute to the 19 people who died when a passenger plane plunged into Lake Victoria, the country’s deadliest plane crash in decades.

The Precision Air flight from the country’s financial capital, Dar es Salaam, crashed on Sunday while trying to land in the northwestern city of Bukoba. The accident was attributed to bad weather.

Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa was among hundreds of people who gathered at Bukoba’s Kaitaba Stadium, where Muslim and Christian clerics led prayers for the dead.

The ceremony of handing over the bodies of the victims to their families should last for hours and will be broadcast live by local stations from the stadium.

Investigators from Precision Air and the Tanzania Airport Authority arrived in the lakeside town on Sunday, where they were able to rescue 24 of the 43 survivors of flight PW 494.

Precision Air, the publicly traded Tanzanian largest private airline, said the plane was an ATR 42-500, made by a Franco-Italian company based in Toulouse, France, and was carrying 39 passengers, including a baby, and four crew members.

President Samia Suluhu Hassan on Monday expressed her condolences to the families of the victims and praised the emergency workers and volunteers.

“I congratulate those who participated in the rescue, including the people of Bukoba,” she said on Twitter. “I pray that the deceased rest in peace and that the injured recover quickly,” she added.

Part-owned Kenya Airways, Precision Air was founded in 1993 and operates domestic and regional flights, as well as private charters to popular tourist destinations such as the Serengeti National Park and the Zanzibar archipelago.

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