- CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters)
- A Colombian jet traveling from Panama to Martinique crashed in Venezuela
on Tuesday after its engines failed, and authorities believed all 160 passengers
and crew died in one of the country's worst air disasters.
-
- The West Caribbean Airways MD-82 aircraft was en route
to the French Caribbean island of Martinique when it went down early Tuesday
at a cattle farm near Venezuela's border with Colombia, authorities said.
-
- Officials at the Colombian airline said 152 passengers,
including an infant child, and eight crew were on board. French aviation
officials said all passengers, who were from Martinique, had been killed
in the accident.
-
- "We believe it will be very difficult for there
to be any survivors," Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said.
-
- Earlier, officials had said 152 passengers and crew were
aboard the flight. A Panama aviation official told CNN en Espanol the aircraft
was West Caribbean charter flight 708.
-
- 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 remote Sierra de Perija region near
the border with Colombia.
-
- "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," Chacon said.
-
- It was the second crash involving West Caribbean aircraft
this year.
-
- Heavy rainfall hampered Venezuelan troops as they scoured
the area for survivors among the scattered wreckage.
-
- 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.
-
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- NewsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&story
- ID=2005-08-16T152415Z_01_KNE644174_R
- TRIDST_0_NEWS-CRASH-VENEZUELA-C-COL.XML
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