160 dead after plane crashes
2005-08-16 14:52
Bogota - Colonel Carlos Montealegre, the head of Colombia's civil aviation agency, said there were no survivors in Tuesday's crash of a West Caribbean Airways plane with 160 people on board that went down in western Venezuela.
Most of the passengers were French nationals, officials said.
"The firefighters who responded to the crash have confirmed that there were no survivors" among the 152 passengers and eight crew members aboard the flight from Panama to Martinique, he said.
Colombian civil aviation officials in Bogota said the jet, a McDonnell Douglas MD-80, had made a distress call at around 02:00.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said that the pilot had reported trouble with both engines and that the plane was losing height at a rate of about 2 100m a minute.
The jet crashed in the Sierra de Perija mountains early on Tuesday, between the districts of La Cucharita and La Negra.
- AFP