HAVANA, Cuba / KARACHI (AGENCIES)/ at least 89 people were killed in two separate plane crashes in Cuba and Pakistan. While 68 people were killed in Cuban air crash, 21 killed in another crash in Karachi.
A Cuban airliner flying from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital Havana crashed with 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners.
The Cuban Institute of Civil Aviation announced that there were no survivors after an airliner carrying 40 Cubans and 28 foreigners crashed in the central province of Sancti Spiritus on Thursday.
AeroCaribbean Flight 883 was en route from eastern Santiago de Cuba to Havana. After making an emergency call, the aircraft lost contact with air traffic controllers before it went down in a mountainous area near the village of Guasimal and burst into flames. The plane was an ATR-72-212 twin turboprop built by ATR, a joint venture of Europe’s EADS and Italian group Finmeccanica.
The list of victims includes 40 Cubans, nine Argentineans, seven Mexicans, three Dutch, two Germans, two Austrians and one Spanish, one French, one Italian, one Japanese and one Venezuelan.
Civil aviation authorities said Flight 883 lost contact with air traffic controllers around 5:42 p.m. Thursday. A commission has been set up to investigate what caused the crash. The last plane crash in Cuba occurred in March 2002, when a plane carrying tourists crashed in the central province of Villa Clara. Sixteen people were killed.
Karachi crash
A small plane with at least 21 people on board crashed after taking off from Pakistan’s Karachi airport today. Pervez George, a spokesman for Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority, said the aircraft crashed near a military ordnance depot at Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport due to a technical fault soon after taking off.
He added, the plane chartered to international oil company ENI, based in Italy, was en route to an oil field in Sindh province, some 190 km northeast of Karachi.
He said there were 19 passengers and two crew on board. At least 12 bodies have been recovered so far. Aviation officials said there was at least one foreigner on board.