Cuban President's daughter Mariela Castro 'alive and kicking' despite reports she was on downed flight

The daughter of Cuba's President Raul Castro has assured journalists she is alive and well, contradicting reports that she had been onboard the downed Air Algerie flight.

Mariela Castro, a sexologist and gay rights activist, said she had been told there was another passenger of the same name aboard flight AH5017.

“I’m at a meeting, happy and healthy,” she told the television network TeleSUR.

“I’m alive and kicking.”

Flight AH5017, which originated in Ouagadougou and was bound for Algiers and went missing amid reports of heavy storms, company sources and officials said.

The wreckage of the Air Algerie plane has been found in Mali near the Burkina Faso border.

Multiple news outlets had reported Ms Castro was onboard, citing information from the airport in Burkina Faso.

Mr Castro took over from his brother Fidel as Cuba's president in 2008.

His daughter Mariela heads the Cuban National Centre for Sex Education.

The crash comes less than six months after one of Algeria's worst air disasters.

In February, a C-130 military aircraft carrying 78 people crashed in poor weather in the mountainous northeast, killing more than 70 people.

The plane had been flying from the desert garrison town of Tamanrasset in Algeria's deep south to Constantine, 320 kilometres (200 miles) east of Algiers.

Tamanrasset was the site of the country's worst-ever civilian air disaster, in March 2003.

In that accident, all but one of the 103 people on board were killed when an Air Algerie Boeing 737-200 crashed on takeoff after one of its engines caught fire.

With AFP