Venezuelan investigators picked through the shattered wreckage of a plane that crashed with 160 people on board, trying to determine what caused the engines to fail and sent the jet plunging from the sky in the country's deadliest air disaster in history.
The pilot radioed authorities saying both engines had failed and requested permission for an emergency landing Tuesday shortly before the West Caribbean Airways plane plummeted to the ground, killing all aboard, officials said.
Seats, pillows, and smoldering wreckage were strewn across a pasture dotted with trees among cattle ranches near the border with Colombia. The plane's tail jutted from the ground.
Somber-faced rescue workers collected body parts and pieces of bone amid bloodstained clothes that lay near charred trees.
The crash was the deadliest in Venezuelan history, according to the Aviation Safety Network, a nonprofit group that keeps a database of air disasters. It said the death toll surpassed a 1969 crash in Venezuela that killed 155, including 71 victims on the ground.
"I was struck by all of the victims and the massive destruction," rescue worker Jose Pena said.
Search teams recovered one of the jet's black boxes, which could give clues to the crash's cause, said Air Force Major Javier Perez, the search and rescue chief. He said the cockpit voice recorder had not been found.
As the plane developed problems hours before dawn Tuesday, the Colombian pilot radioed a nearby airport in Maracaibo requesting permission to descend from 10,100m to 4,200m, Venezuelan Interior Minister Jesse Chacon said.
Investigators believe the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 fell into a steep descent minutes later, plunging about 2,130m a minute before slamming into the ground, Chacon said.
Residents reported hearing an explosion when the plane went down east of the Sierra de Perija mountains near Machiques, about 650km west of Caracas.
The jet was carrying 152 tourists from Martinique, including a 21-month-old infant, returning home after a week in Panama, officials said. All eight Colombian crew members were killed.
At Martinique's airport, relatives broke down in sobs as a lawmaker read out victims' names. In the town of Ducos, where about 30 victims reportedly lived, some 150 distraught friends and relatives gathered outside city hall.
"I don't understand. It's as though the sky fell on my head today," said Claire Renette, 40, whose sister was among the dead.
Some passengers were descendants of island workers who helped build the Panama Canal a century ago, said Alina Guerrero, a spokeswoman for Panama's Foreign Ministry.
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