HAVANA (AFP) – A Cuban airliner on a flight to Havana crashed in central Cuba, killing all 68 people on board including 28 foreigners, officials said Friday via state media.
The plane operated by state-run Aerocaribbean "fell to the ground inthe region of Guasimal,"after the pilot reported an emergency, according to a statement by Cuba's Civil Aeronautics Institute read on state television.
"There were no survivors" from the flight which departed Thursday afternoon from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba bound for the capital, the official website Cubadebate.cu reported. It was the Communist-ruled island's worst air disaster in 21 years.
Among the passengers were 10 Europeans, nine Argentinians, seven Mexicans, one Venezuelan and one Japanese, state media reported.
The Europeans included three Dutch, two Germans, two Austrians,and one each from France, Italy and Spain.There were 40 Cubans on board, including seven crew.
Pakistan plane crash kills all onBoard
Updated 3 hours 39 minutes ago
The pilot of the twin-engine turboprop, operated by Pakistani charter JS Air, reported engine trouble, then nosedived near a military depot in a Karachi suburb, in an accident that civil aviation blamed on a technical fault. A charter plane carrying staff from Italian oil company Eni crashed minutes after take-off in Pakistan's business hub of Karachi on Friday, killing all 21 people on board.
"The plane has been totally gutted and there are no survivors," Lieutenant Colonel Noor Alam told reporters near the crash site in Gulistan-e-Jauhar.
Television footage showed the aircraft split in two, the front part totally destroyed and the rear section torn off alongside two wheels.
"The cause of [the] crash was a technical fault. The pilot reported that one of the engines was not working. Everyone died. There were no survivors," Pakistan's Civil Aviation Authority spokesman Pervez George said.
