THIRTY-TWO people were killed and nine seriously injured when a Belgian military plane crashed and burst into flames at Eindhoven airport in the southern Netherlands.
``Thirty-two people have lost their lives in a most terrible way,'' Dutch junior Defence Minister Jan Gmelich Meijling told a news conference.
He said up to nine were seriously injured among the 40 to 41 people aboard the 26-year-old Belgian C-130 Hercules military aircraft. The plane, carrying members of a Dutch military brass band from a performance at Villafranca in Italy, banked steeply as it came in to land and plunged into a field in the airstrip's military section.
Emergency services brought the fire under control within 50 minutes, while police sealed off the airbase.
A makeshift mortuary was set up at the airbase, while the injured, suffering from second and third-degree burns, were taken to nearby hospitals and specialist burns units.
``After, or during, the landing something went wrong - dramatically wrong,'' said Lieutenant-General BAC Droste, commanding officer of the Royal Dutch Air Force.
``Traffic control saw it happen but report no warning from the cockpit,'' he said, adding that the plane appeared to be functioning normally until it attempted to land.
A team of Dutch and Belgian experts were investigating the cause of the crash.
Witnesses said the plane appeared to abort a landing and careered into a field.
``The plane wanted to land and then took off again and flipped over with its wing clipping the grass and then there was a big flame,'' one young boy told Dutch television.
All four Belgian crew were among the dead.
Belgian Defence Minister Jean-Pol Poncelet said it was the first crash by a Belgian military Hercules for 25 years, adding that the plane, one of 12 operated by the military, had been undergoing modernisation.
Queen Beatrix expressed her sympathy for the relatives of the dead and injured. Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok interrupted his holiday to travel to the scene.-Reuter.
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