Bogota: At least 66 people were killed and several injured after a Colombian military aircraft crashed during take-off on Monday. A search is on for four persons who are still missing.
The accident occurred as the plane was taking off from Puerto Leguizamo, on the border with Peru, Colombian defense minister Pedro Sanchez said on X.
The death toll was nearly double that of the previous figure given by authorities, who continued search and recovery efforts at the site of the deadly crash, as reported by The Tribune.
Hugo Alejandro Lopez, head of the country’s armed forces, said that the Lockheed Martin-built Hercules C-130 transport plane was carrying 128 people, including 11 Air Force members, 115 army personnel and two national police officers.
While taking off, the plane was believed to have suffered an impact near the end of the runway, firefighter Eduardo San Juan Callejas told Caracol, with a wing of the plane later clipping a tree as it was plummeting.
There were some explosive devices on board that got detonated after the plane caught fire, he said.
The first responders were residents of the remote area, who pulled out survivors, with videos showing men speeding down a dirt road with wounded soldiers on the back of their motorcycles.
Military vehicles arrived later, though authorities said the crash site was difficult to reach, impeding rescue efforts. Lopez said that 57 of the survivors had been hospitalised, with 30 of them in non-serious condition at a military clinic.
President Gustavo Petro criticised bureaucratic obstacles for delaying his plans to modernise the military.
“I will grant no further delays; it is the lives of our young people that are at stake,” he said in a post on X. “If civilian or military administrative officials are not up to this challenge, they must be removed.”
A spokesperson for Lockheed Martin said the company was committed to helping Colombia as it investigates the incident.
Colombia acquired its first C-130s in the late 1960s. It has more recently modernized some older C-130s with newer models sent from the US under a provision that allows for the transfer of used or surplus military equipment.
Hercules C-130s are frequently used in Colombia to transport troops as part of the military’s operations amid a six-decade-long internal conflict that has claimed more than 450,000 lives.
