JOHANNESBURG, Jan 20 (Reuters) - Authorities on Sunday searched a mountain in southern Angola where a chartered light aircraft crashed, killing all 12 people aboard, Angop news agency reported.

Investigators were at the site outside Huambo, some 450 km (280 miles) southeast of the capital Luanda, a day after a twin-propeller plane plunged into the Mbave mountain.

Helder Presa, Angola's deputy minister for transport, was expected to receive a briefing there, Angop said.

An Angolan aviation official has said that bad weather may have been a factor in the accident, which occurred as the Beechcraft King Air B200 was nearing the airport in Huambo early Saturday morning. It was coming from the capital, Luanda.

Angop said that among the dead was businessman Valentim Amoes, but gave no further details about him. Portugal's Lusa news agency said on Saturday that two of the other victims were Portuguese nationals.

The plane belonged to a company that operates chartered flights in oil-rich Angola, a former Portuguese colony that is struggling to upgrade airports, roads, bridges and other infrastructure devastated during a 27-year civil war.

An economic boom, fuelled by oil wealth, has led to growing demand for air travel in the country since the end of the war in 2002, straining the capacity of the state-owned TAAG airline as well as smaller carriers and charter companies.

A TAAG Boeing 737 crashed last year in the northern city of M'banza Congo, killing a handful of passengers and injuring dozens of others. That crash led the European Union to put TAAG on its airline blacklist. (Writing by Paul Simao; editing by Myra MacDonald)

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