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CARACAS, Aug 16: A Colombian jet travelling from Panama to Martinique crashed in Venezuela on Tuesday after its engines failed, killing all 153 passengers and seven crew members in one of the country’s worst air disasters.
All the passengers were French living in the Caribbean island of Martinique, governed by Paris.
The West Caribbean Airways MD-82 aircraft was en route to the French Caribbean island when it began to have engine trouble and attempted to divert to an airport in Venezuela. It crashed at a cattle farm near Venezuela’s border with Colombia.
“Unfortunately, there were no survivors from this accident,” Col Francisco Paz, head of Venezuela’s National Civil Aviation Institute, told local television.
Most of the passengers were local government officials in Martinique who had been on holiday with their families, an official at the Fort-de-France airport in Martinique said. He said the 153 passengers included one baby and four children.
The Fort-de-France airport official said the plane had been chartered by the Globe Trotters travel agency in Martinique.
In Seattle, Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx said the company was dispatching a team of air safety investigators to help search for the cause of the crash.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said the aircraft had changed its route to request a landing at Chinita Airport in the western Venezuelan city of Maracaibo, but lost altitude and crashed in the Sierra de Perija region near the border with Colombia.
DIFFICULTIES: The pilot had reported difficulties before the crash.
“When it was flying over Venezuelan airspace, they had problems with one engine and then with another engine, and at that moment it went down,” Mr Chacon said.
Heavy rainfall hampered Venezuelan troops as they scoured the area for survivors among the scattered wreckage.
By midday, rescue workers had pulled 56 bodies from the charred remains of the aircraft, said Col. Antonio Rivero, head of Civil Protection agency.
It was the second crash involving West Caribbean aircraft this year.
French Transport Minister Dominique Perben said the airplane had been inspected recently and no problems had been noted.
“This aircraft, which since May has landed several times on French territory, was twice checked by the local services of the DGAC (the French civil aviation authority). And these two inspections led to no particular observation,” he said.
West Caribbean is based in the Colombian city of Medellin and operates two McDonnell Douglas MD-81s, an MD-82, two Airbus ATR42s and several smaller aircraft.
In March, a West Caribbean Airways Let L-410 aircraft departing from Providencia, Colombia, failed to climb and hit hills close to the runway. Two crew and six passengers died in that accident.
French President Jacques Chirac had learned “with very deep emotion of the terrible air disaster which occurred in Venezuela and in which a very great number of victims were French,” his office said in a statement.
Martinique is an overseas department of France. Chirac’s office said the president had ordered Overseas Territories Minister Francois Baroin to travel to Martinique. —Reuters
