A passenger jet carrying at least 90 people to Iran, including a school basketball team, crashed yesterday near the main airport in Kyrgyzstan. A government spokeswoman in the Central Asian nation said at least 71 people had been killed.
The Boeing 737 crashed near Bishkek's airport, said Major Damian Pickart, public affairs officer at the Manas US air base, which is in the airport.
An official at Manas International Airport said the crash occurred after the crew reported a technical problem about 10 minutes into the flight to Tehran and said the plane was returning to the airport. The official said there were 83 passengers and seven crew members aboard.
Government spokeswoman Roza Daudova said at least 71 people on board the plane were killed and 24 survived. She said the survivors included seven out of 17 members of the basketball team from a high school in Bishkek.
Emergency Situations Minister Kamchibek Tashiyev, however, said 25 survived.
At least 14 people rescued from the burning plane were taken to hospital, two of them in critical condition.
Ramis Satybekov, a spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry, said the likely cause of the crash was either engine failure or a malfunction in the flight control system. Daudova, however, said decompression caused the jet to crash.
Interior Minister Moldomusa Kongatiyev said the plane went down six miles from the airport. Pickart said the US base sent ambulances and firefighting equipment in response to a Kyrgyz request for help.
The airport official said the plane belonged to Itek Air, a Kyrgyz company, but was operated by Iran Aseman Airlines. Itek Air has been banned from operating in EU airspace for failing to meet safety and aviation standards.
Kyrgyzstan is a poor, mountainous former Soviet republic west of China. The US air base supports operations in nearby Afghanistan.
Guatemala, meanwhile, yesterday reported the crash of a small plane in a field in the east of the country, killing 10 people and injuring four. The eight passengers were believed to be foreigners.
In Spain, the aviation authority said the airline involved in a crash last week that killed 154 people in Madrid had another technical problem yesterday with one of its planes and had to make an unscheduled landing.
Air agency AENA said Spanair flight JK2565 from Barcelona to the Canary Island of Lanzarote made an unscheduled landing at Malaga airport because of an unspecified technical problem. The flight with 141 passengers aboard was then cancelled, AENA confirmed.
On Wednesday, a Spanair MD-82 bound for the Canary Islands crashed upon take-off in Madrid, killing 154 people. Authorities still do not know why that airplane crashed, but it had aborted a previous take-off because of problems with a temperature gauge.
The death toll from the crash rose on Saturday when a 31-year-old woman succumbed to her injuries. Eighteen others survived, including three children.
Services across Spain paid tribute to the victims of the country's worst air disaster in a quarter of a century. At Madrid's Almudena Cathedral, prayers were said for both survivors and victims.
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