45 dead in Philippines after military aircraft crashes
A Philippine air force C-130 aircraft carrying combat troops crashed in a southern province while landing on Sunday, killing at least 42 soldiers on board and three civilians on the ground, while at least 49 were rescued from the burning wreckage, officials said.
Some soldiers were seen jumping off the aircraft before it crashed and exploded around noon in the periphery of the Jolo airport in Sulu province, military officials said. Three of seven villagers who were hit on the ground have died.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said rescue and recovery efforts were ongoing.
The aircraft had 96 people on board, including three pilots and five crew and the rest were army personnel, the military said, adding five soldiers remained unaccounted for late on Sunday.
The pilots survived but were seriously injured, officials said.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules was one of two ex-US Air Force aircraft handed over to the Philippines as part of military assistance this year.
It crashed while landing shortly before noon in Bangkal village in the mountainous town of Patikul, military chief of staff General Cirilito Sobejana said.
Military officials said the injured personnel were brought to a hospital in Sulu or flown to nearby Zamboanga city and troops were trying to search for the rest.
Initial pictures released by the military showed the tail section of the cargo plane relatively intact. The other parts of the plane were burned or scattered in pieces in a clearing surrounded by coconut trees. Soldiers and other rescuers with stretchers were seen dashing to and from the smoke-shrouded crash site.
Rescue workers arrive as smoke billows from the wreckage of a Philippine air force C-130 transport plane after it crashed near the airport in Jolo town, Sulu province, on the southern island of Mindanao.
The plane was transporting troops, many of them new soldiers who had just undergone basic training, from the southern Cagayan de Oro city for deployment in Sulu, officials said.
"They were supposed to join us in our fight against terrorism," Sulu military commander Maj Gen William Gonzales said. Government forces have been battling Abu Sayyaf militants in the predominantly Muslim province of Sulu for decades.
It was not immediately clear what caused the crash. Regional military commander Lt Gen Corleto Vinluan said it was unlikely that the aircraft took hostile fire, and cited witnesses as saying that it appeared to have overshot the runway then crashed in the periphery of the airport.
"It's very unfortunate," Sobejana told reporters. "The plane missed the runway and it was trying to regain power but failed and crashed."
An air force official said that the Jolo runway is shorter than most others in the country, making it more difficult for pilots to adjust if an aircraft misses the landing spot.
