A Colombian military aircraft transporting 128 troops and crew members crashed shortly after taking off from southern Colombia on Monday morning, killing 66 people and injuring dozens of others, Colombian military officials said at a briefing.
The dead included 58 members of the army, six members of the air force and two police officers, according to defense ministry officials. Four people were still unaccounted for.
The devastating death toll, from a crash in a desolate, jungle-dense region, reverberated across Colombia, as residents rushed to the scene to help rescue soldiers and the military mounted a massive airlift to transport the injured to hospitals.
Colombian officials were still investigating the cause of the crash as of Monday night.
“At this time we don’t have any more details except that as soon as it took off, the airplane suffered a problem and descended toward the ground, a couple of kilometers from the airport,” Gen. Carlos Fernando Silva Rueda, the commander of the Colombian Air Force, said in a video statement.
The Colombian Air Force identified the plane as a C-130 Hercules, a large, four-engine turboprop aircraft typically used to transport heavy loads of cargo, military personnel and military vehicles.
The aircraft had taken off from Puerto Leguízamo, a riverside town in the Putumayo region, on Colombia’s border with Peru, at 9:50 a.m. before it crashed.
In a message posted on social media Monday afternoon, President Gustavo Petro said that dozens of people were injured. He thanked the residents in the Putumayo area who scrambled to the crash site on motorcycles and on foot to help those injured and to put out the blaze from the crash.
“That is how a homeland is built,” he said on social media, adding that residents “went all the way to the airport runway and brought water and love to the boys.”
Luis Emilio Bustos, the mayor of Puerto Leguízamo, told The New York Times that at least 14 people who had arrived at the town’s hospital were in “grave condition.”
“We continue to work and continue to conduct rescue missions, taking into account that many bodies fell far away,” he said in a voice message on Monday evening. “Others, possibly because of the large amount of fire, will be difficult to find.”
A video released by Noticias Caracol, a Colombian news outlet, seems to show the aircraft losing altitude and coming down over a field as a resident screams, “Oh, it fell!”
The plane was traveling to Puerto Asís, a town about 125 miles from Puerto Leguízamo. It crashed in a region lined with farms of coca plants harvested to make cocaine, where armed groups involved in illegal drug trafficking have a large presence.
Pedro Arnulfo Sánchez, the defense minister, said that there were “no indications of an attack by illegal actors.” He added that the fire at the crash site had caused some of the ammunition being transported by the airplane to explode.
“I express my most sincere condolences to the families of those affected and, in respect for their pain, I call for avoiding speculation until official information is available,” Mr. Sánchez said in a post on social media.
Videos posted on social media by El Tiempo, the largest newspaper in Colombia, showed a large fire in a field and a chaotic scene as residents on motorbikes cleared the way for soldiers rushing to the scene, on foot and in trucks.
The crash occurred in an isolated pocket of Colombia on the banks of the Putumayo River, which divides northern Peru from Colombia. Mr. Bustos, the mayor, said that the injured were being airlifted to major hospitals elsewhere in the country.
“It’s very far,” he said. “It’s a remote town in a rural zone, and access is very limited.”
The Colombian military said it had deployed helicopters and an aircraft that together could airlift as many as 74 people.
A video of the seeming crash site posted by Semana, a Colombian magazine, showed fire and smoke rising from what appeared to be remains of the aircraft. Another video posted by the magazine showed at least three soldiers, one of whom had blood on his face, being driven in the back of motorcycles by local residents.
Genevieve Glatsky contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia.
Luis Ferré-Sadurní is a reporter for The Times based in Bogotá, Colombia
The post Plane Crash Kills 66 From Military and Police in Colombia appeared first on New York Times.
