Cuba plane crash worst in 20 years

GUASIMAL – Rescue workers on Friday pulled bodies from the charred wreckage of a state airliner that went down in rugged central Cuba, as desperate relatives gathered at the capital’s airport and called foreign embassies seeking information on their loved ones.

All 68 people aboard AeroCaribbean Flight 883 were killed when the turboprop plane went down on Thursday afternoon in a remote area near the village of Guasimal in Sancti Spiritus province.Twenty-eight foreigners were among the dead, including nine Argentines, seven Mexicans, and citizens of Germany, Holland, Spain and Italy. One Japanese national was also on board and Australia’s government said in a statement that Cuban officials had confirmed that two Australian women were on the plane. It was Cuba’s worst air disaster in more than 20 years.The plane, carrying 61 passengers and an all-Cuban crew of seven, was en route to the capital from the main eastern city of Santiago de Cuba when it reported an emergency at 17h42 local time and later crashed in flames.Cuban state media showed footage of rescue workers and military personnel poring over the crash site in the evening hours while firefighters sprayed the smouldering wreckage. Bodies of the victims were being brought to the medical examiner’s office in Havana for identification, and a commission was formed to determine the cause of the crash.The crash is the deadliest in Cuba since a chartered Cubana de Aviacion plane en route from Havana to Milan, Italy, went down shortly after take off in September 1989, killing all 126 people on board, as well as 24 people on the ground. – Nampa-AP

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