HAVANA: Cuba began two days of national mourning on Saturday for victims of the crash of a state airways plane that killed all but three of its 110 passengers and crew.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel said an investigation was under way into Friday’s crash of the nearly 40-year-old Boeing 737, leased to the national carrier Cubana de Aviacion by a Mexican company.

Three women pulled alive from the mangled wreckage are the only known survivors.

The Boeing crashed shortly after taking off from Havana’s Jose Marti airport, coming down in a field near the airport and sending a thick column of acrid smoke into the air.

The mourning period was to last till midnight on Sunday, the Communist Party leader and former president Raul Castro said. Flags were flown at half-mast throughout the country.

The plane was on a domestic flight from Havana to the eastern city of Holguin. Most of the 104 passengers were Cuban, with five foreigners, including two Argentines, among them.

The plane was almost completely destroyed in the crash and subsequent fire. What appeared to be one of the plane’s wings was wedged among scorched tree trunks, but almost nothing remained of the main fuselage.

Cuban authorities have not said whether they have recovered the plane’s black box flight recorders.

Built in 1979, the plane was leased from a small Mexican company, Global Air, also known as Aerolineas Damoj.

Mexico said it was sending two civil aviation specialists to help in the investigation. The six crew members were Mexican nationals.

Boeing issued a statement saying that a “technical team stands ready to assist” and offered condolences to friends and relatives of the victims.

Diaz-Canel, who succeeded Castro as the communist island’s leader last month, appeared aghast as he surveyed the recovery efforts, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and surrounded by officials.

Castro sent his condolences to families bereaved in the “catastrophic accident”, a statement read, as Russian President Vladimir Putin and a string of Latin American leaders also expressed sympathy.

Pope Francis asked the church in Cuba to convey condolences to families “who mourn the unexpected disappearance of loved ones”.

Published in Dawn, May 20th, 2018