Last Update: Friday, 02:26 a.m. ET

An Algerian passenger plane with 116 people on board is presumed to have crashed in northwest Africa on Thursday after disappearing from radar, in what would be the third airline disaster in a week.

French officials have dispatched a military unit to secure the site in restive northern Mali where an Air Algeria plane crashed with 116 people aboard, the Associated Press reports.

France's interior minister said Friday that terrorism cannot be excluded as a cause for the tragedy though it was likely due to bad weather.

The MD-83 aircraft, owned by Spanish company Swiftair and leased by Algeria's flagship carrier, disappeared from radar less than an hour after it took off early Thursday from Burkina Faso's capital of Ouagadougou for Algiers.

"Everything seems to indicate that this plane has crashed in Mali," French President Francois Hollande said Thursday evening. "The search for the aircraft will last as long as necessary. Everything must be done to find this aircraft," he said.

A Burkina Faso official says the wreckage has been found in Mali.

Air Algerie Flight 5017 was en route from the west African nation of Burkina Faso to Algiers, and it lost contact with Algerian aviation authorities around 9:55 p.m. ET (1:55 a.m. GMT) as it was flying over Mali.

A Twitter account believed to be associated with the airline — though not verified — tweeted that the plane likely crashed in the region of Tilemsi, 43 miles from Gao, located in the central-southeast part of Mali.

Citing an Algerian aviation official, Reuters is also reporting that the plane crashed. "I can confirm that it has crashed," the source said.

Though some reports said that officials had found a crash site, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said that "no trace" of the plane had been found, but that it "likely" crashed, according to France24.

Swiftair, a private Spanish airline that provided the plane to Air Algerie, said in a statement that its MD83 aircraft was carrying 110 passengers and six crew members.

A representative at the airport from where the flight originated tells Mashable "the crash" happened outside of Burkina Faso's borders, in Mali.

“We've been asked not to communicate about the crash of AH5017," the person writes in an email. "It happened outside the territory of Burkina Faso in circumstances that only Air Algérie and the Malian authorities can explain.”

The airport also published a map of where the plane was traveling when it disappeared from radar.

The airport's caption says it's likely the crash zone. When Mashable reached out seeking clarification, a source at the airport shared a link to this location on Google.

On its Facebook page, Ouagadougou Airport listed the nationalities of those on board. They include 51 French, 28 Burkina Faso, 20 Lebanese, 5 Canadians, 4 Germans, 1 Luxembourg, 1 Swiss and 6 Spanish crew.

Air navigation services lost track of Flight 5017 about 50 minutes after takeoff from Ougadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, the official Algerian news agency said. That means the plane had been missing for hours before the news was made public. The path between Ougadougou and Algiers passes over Mali, where unrest continues in the northern part of that country, raising fears of terrorism. The plane was flying over the city of Goa, the stronghold of a separatist group in Mali.

The FAA has previously issued warnings to be extra cautious when flying over Mali:

"Civil aircraft operating into, out of, within or over Mali are at risk of encountering insurgent small arms fire, rocket-propelled grenades, rocket and mortar fire, and anti-aircraft fire, to include shoulder-fired man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS)."

However, a senior French official said it was unlikely that fighters in Mali had weaponry that could shoot down a plane. The official, who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak for attribution, said the combatants there have shoulder-fired weapons that could not hit an aircraft at cruising altitude.

France has dispatched three military aircraft to the area, according to France24.

Minutes before the flight vanished from radar, the pilot reportedly asked for the flight path to be modified due to weather conditions. According to satellite imagery, there was some weather activity south of Mali at the time the plane dropped from radar.

Speaking on television Thursday night, the french president said that the crew radioed at 1:48 a.m. local time that they were going to "change route because of very difficult weather conditions."

"We will try to find out what happened between now and then," he said.

The area where the plane was traveling was hit with a massive sandstorm overnight, Reuters reports, citing a Malian diplomat. Issa Saly Maiga, head of Mali's National Civil Aviation Agency told Reuters that authorities were searching for the plane, but they had no idea if it was in Malian territory.

Swiftair MD83 with registration EC-LTV has been leased to Air Algerie for the last days. http://t.co/pqCiGNVbWh pic.twitter.com/8FVqOENAmA — Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) July 24, 2014

The missing airliner is the third major aviation incident in a week. Last Thursday, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot out of the sky over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew. On Wednesday, a TransAsia Airways passenger plane crashed on a small Taiwanese island in typhoon conditions, with 47 people feared dead.

African airlines, in particular, have had poor safety records overall. On average, planes are 15 times more likely to crash in Africa than in North America, experts say, making the continent the least safe for air travel.

In 2003, Air Algerie Flight 6289, a Boeing 737 carrying 103 people, crashed on takeoff from Tamanrasset, Algeria, after an engine failure. All but one aboard were killed.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press