Plane with 68 aboard crashes in Cuba

HAVANA, (Reuters) – A plane carrying 68 people  crashed in a mountainous region of central Cuba after issuing  an emergency call, state-run media said yesterday, and there  were no initial reports of survivors.

Cuban television said the plane was an ATR-72-212 twin  turboprop aircraft flown by Cuba’s state-owned Aero Caribbean  airlines.

The media reports said there were 40 Cubans on board,  including seven crew members, and 28 foreigners.
The plane, Flight 883, left Santiago de Cuba in eastern  Cuba en route to Havana and went down at 5:42 p.m. local time  (2242 GMT) near the town of Guasimal in Sancti Spiritus  province. After making an emergency call, the plane lost  contact with air traffic controllers.

An employee at the Guasimal hospital told Reuters that  officials there were told nobody survived the crash.
“They called just now and said there are no survivors but I  don’t know if it’s true,” the employee said. “So far they  haven’t brought anybody” to the hospital.

Sources in Sancti Spiritus said seven bodies had been  pulled from the wreckage, which a witness described as “a ball  of flame in the middle of the mountain.”

Rescue workers had to use a bulldozer to plow their way  through thick vegetation to the crash site, the sources said.