A small army plane slammed into an apartment building in an upscale neighborhood of Ecuador’s mountainous capital on Thursday, killing at least five people aboard the aircraft and two more on the ground.
The plane grazed a house before plowing into the four-story building, sending a fireball and black smoke into the evening sky and filling a residential yard with the aircraft’s wreckage. A thick mist shrouded the neighborhood at the time, though the cause of the crash was unknown.
“It was horrible. I heard the plane flying very low, then I heard the explosion,” neighbor Camille Avfert said. “We ran out onto the street and saw fire.”
Quito fire chief Atahualpa Sanchez said emergency crews recovered the victims’ badly burned bodies, while rescuers evacuated an unspecified number of injured people in stable condition.
Journalists at the scene saw rescuers carry away a girl whose head was bloodied.
The army said the pilot, a major, the co-pilot, a lieutenant and the mechanic died in the crash. In a later statement it said the pilot’s wife and son were also killed.
The Red Cross reported that two more people on the ground died, including a woman identified as Elena Reascos, the mother of a nine-year-old boy.
“I was with my mother in the house when I heard something crash and there was an explosion,” the boy, Said Arguello, said. “The flames were everywhere. I couldn’t get out of my room and the firefighters rescued me.”
Red Cross official Henry Ochoa told broadcaster Ecuavisa that seven bodies had been found, but “there may be another person or more underneath the fuselage.”
Defense Minister Javier Ponce said the Beechcraft army plane was on a training run. It crashed at about 5:30pm as it approached Quito’s airport from Manta, 260km to the southeast.
The aircraft went down about 4km from the airport on a street where four other planes crashed during the 1990s.
Gonzalez Suarez Avenue, with luxurious buildings up to 15 stories tall, is along the path of descending airplanes as they prepare to land in Quito.
The north-side neighborhood is also home to the US ambassador’s residence, though the crash occurred some distance away and an embassy spokeswoman said that the ambassador had not been hurt.
Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa visited the site to learn details of the crash.
BACKLASH: The National Party quit its decades-long partnership with the Liberal Party after their election loss to center-left Labor, which won a historic third term Australia’s National Party has split from its conservative coalition partner of more than 60 years, the Liberal Party, citing policy differences over renewable energy and after a resounding loss at a national election this month. “Its time to have a break,” Nationals leader David Littleproud told reporters yesterday. The split shows the pressure on Australia’s conservative parties after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s center-left Labor party won a historic second term in the May 3 election, powered by a voter backlash against US President Donald Trump’s policies. Under the long-standing partnership in state and federal politics, the Liberal and National coalition had shared power
NO EXCUSES: Marcos said his administration was acting on voters’ demands, but an academic said the move was emotionally motivated after a poor midterm showing Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday sought the resignation of all his Cabinet secretaries, in a move seen as an attempt to reset the political agenda and assert his authority over the second half of his single six-year term. The order came after the president’s allies failed to win a majority of Senate seats contested in the 12 polls on Monday last week, leaving Marcos facing a divided political and legislative landscape that could thwart his attempts to have an ally succeed him in 2028. “He’s talking to the people, trying to salvage whatever political capital he has left. I think it’s
CONTROVERSY: During the performance of Israel’s entrant Yuval Raphael’s song ‘New Day Will Rise,’ loud whistles were heard and two people tried to get on stage Austria’s JJ yesterday won the Eurovision Song Contest, with his operatic song Wasted Love triumphing at the world’s biggest live music television event. After votes from national juries around Europe and viewers from across the continent and beyond, JJ gave Austria its first victory since bearded drag performer Conchita Wurst’s 2014 triumph. After the nail-biting drama as the votes were revealed running into yesterday morning, Austria finished with 436 points, ahead of Israel — whose participation drew protests — on 357 and Estonia on 356. “Thank you to you, Europe, for making my dreams come true,” 24-year-old countertenor JJ, whose
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
RSS