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Venezuelan authorities try to establish cause of crash

Investigators in Venezuela were working to find out why a plane crashed into a mountain face shortly after take-off last week, killing all 46 people on board, President Hugo Chavez said on Friday.

The wreckage of the twin-prop ATR-42 aircraft was found early on Friday just 10km from the airport of Merida, a town in the western Andes region that was its point of departure.

It went down just before sunset on Thursday, minutes after leaving for Caracas, 500km away.

"The crashed plane practically disintegrated and only debris can be seen in a rugged zone," the head of Venezuela's civil protection service, General Antonio Rivero, said after flying over the site.

Mountain rescue teams were climbing a sheer mountain face known as La Cara del Indio ("the Indian's face") to get at the wreck, which was at nearly 4,000m altitude, Rivero said.

The rough terrain meant it could take up to three days to recover all the bodies, he said. Strong winds and low clouds were hampering the use of helicopters.

Chavez confirmed that "46 people died in an accident shortly after their plane took off" and offered his condolences to the victims' families.

"We do not know the cause but an investigation is underway. The crash took place in a remote mountainous area," he said in an address to the nation, adding that weather was not suspected to be a factor.

At least five passengers were Colombians, a foreign ministry statement out of Bogota said.

Aerial photos showed only the tail of the plane intact, stuck in the mountain. The rest of the aircraft was pulverized.

The plane was owned by a small Venezuelan outfit, Santa Barbara Airlines, which said that, while it dated from the late 1980s, regular maintenance had been properly carried out.

The company, based out of the Maracaibo, had no record of accidents prior to the crash.

The head of the national civil protection service, Antonio Rivero, said the aircraft was carrying three crew members and 43 passengers at the time of the accident.

The family of Venezuela's junior minister for citizen security Tarek El Alssami; an opposition political analyst, Italo Luongo; and a mayor from the Merida region, Alexander Quintero, and his 11-year-old son were believed to have been on board.

Noel Marquez, the regional chief of the civil protection service in Merida, said the plane had not sent any emergency signal during its flight.
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