Rescue workers have pulled bodies from the charred wreckage of a state airliner that went down in rugged central Cuba, as desperate relatives gathered at the capital's airport and called foreign embassies seeking information on their loved ones.
All 68 people aboard Aero Caribbean Flight 883 were killed when the turboprop plane went down Thursday afternoon in a remote area near the village of Guasimal in Sancti Spiritus province.
Twenty-eight foreigners were among the dead, including nine Argentines, seven Mexicans, and citizens of Germany, Holland, Spain and Italy. One Japanese national was also on board and Australia's government said in a statement that Cuban officials had confirmed that two Australian women were on the plane.
It was Cuba's worst air disaster in more than 20 years. The plane, carrying 61 passengers and an all-Cuban crew of seven, was en route to the capital from the main eastern city of Santiago de Cuba when it reported an emergency at 5:42 pm and later crashed in flames.
Cuban state media showed footage of rescue workers and military personnel poring over the crash site in the evening hours while fire-fighters sprayed the smouldering wreckage. Bodies of the victims were being brought to the medical examiner's office in Havana for identification, and a commission was formed to determine the cause of the crash.
“All of the bodies are burned, except for two that were in the back of the plane,” chief investigator Rolando Diaz Vergal told local state-run newspaper Escambray.
“It seems that the passengers had no time to react because the burned bodies are still in their own seats, which has helped us with the identifications.”
Vergal said that the crash site smelled of death and some body parts were thrown up into the branches of nearby vegetation.
State media reported that rescuers had found the plane's flight data recorders, a key step in possibly determining the cause of the crash. (AP)