A chartered aircraft
with 81 people on board, including a Brazilian first division soccer
team heading to Colombia for a regional tournament final, has crashed on
its way to Medellin’s international airport.
Aviation authorities said there are reports of at least six survivors.
“It’s
a tragedy of huge proportions,” Medellin Mayor Federico Gutierrez told
Blu Radio on his way to the site in a mountainous area outside the city
where aircraft crashed.
Aviation authorities said the British
Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, operated by a Bolivian charter airline
named Lamia, declared an emergency at 10 pm Monday (0300 GMT) due to an
electrical failure.
Authorities and rescuers were immediately activated but an air force helicopter had to turn back because of low visibility.
They
urged journalists to stay away from the hard-to-access zone and stay
off the roads to facilitate the entry of ambulances and rescuers. The
area has been hit by heavy rains in recent days.
An ambulance
transporting a male passenger with oxygen and covered in a blanket
arrived on a stretcher to a local hospital, Blu Radio reported. He was
apparently alive.
The aircraft, which made a stop in Santa Cruz,
Bolivia, was transporting the first division Chapecoense soccer team
from southern Brazil.
The team was scheduled to play Wednesday in
the first of a two-game Copa Sudamericana final against Atletico
Nacional of Medellin.
The plane was carrying 72 passengers and nine crew members, aviation authorities said in a statement.
Local
radio said the same aircraft transported Argentina’s national squad for
a match earlier this month in Brazil, and previously had transported
Venezuela’s national team.
A video published on the team’s
Facebook page showed the team readying for the flight earlier Monday in
Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport.
The team, from the
small city of Chapeco, was in the middle of a fairy tale season. It
joined Brazil’s first division in 2014 for the first time since the
1970s and made it last week to the Copa Sudamericana finals – the
equivalent of the UEFA Europa League tournament – after defeating
Argentina’s San Lorenzo squad.
From telegraph