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Airplanes are falling out of the sky!!!


philippio

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First the Air France A340 in Toronto, then the Helios 737-300 in Athens, then that chartered MD-80 in western Venezuela and today...

Peru jet crashes in jungle, at least 40 dead

By Robin Emmott

36 minutes ago

LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - A Peruvian passenger plane crashed during a severe storm in Peru's northeastern jungle on Tuesday, killing at least 40 people, police said.

A spokesman for the state-run airline TANS said the Boeing 737-200 plane, which was carrying 92 passengers, made an emergency landing without its landing gear 1.8 miles from Pucallpa airport, 490 miles northeast of Lima.

The accident happened at 3:06 p.m. (1606 EDT), TANS said.

"There are 40 cadavers that rescue teams are pulling from the wreckage. There could be more deaths, we assume some 60 people in total since we've rescued 20 injured persons," a police officer in Pucallpa told RPP radio.

Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo said in a televised address there were between 20 and 30 survivors.

Foreign tourists were on the flight, police Lt. David Mori told Reuters. "There are possibly Italians and Colombians are among the dead or injured," he said.

TANS said it would send two planes with medicine and rescue teams early on Wednesday. Aircraft cannot land at the small Pucallpa airport at night.

It was the third major accident involving a passenger airplane in less than two weeks, after crashes in Greece and Venezuela.

TANS executive Jorge Belevan told reporters that 92 passengers and eight crew, including the pilots, were on board the plane, which left Lima for Pucallpa en route to Iquitos, in the northern jungle near the Colombian and Brazilian borders.

Iquitos is the largest city in the Peruvian jungle and the navigation gateway to the Amazon.

"The plane was about to land in Pucallpa ... but it was caught in a cross wind ... It did not crash, it was an emergency landing," Belevan said.

He added that the aircraft was built in 1983 and TANS recently rented it from a South African company. He declined to give a death toll.

"It's really a Dantesque scene," said police officer Arioso Obregon.

One witness, Tomas Ruiz, told RPP radio the plane was "totally destroyed."

"The plane made an emergency landing but without its landing gear," said firefighter Ilda Pineda. "The weather was really terrible, there was a fierce storm at the time," a police officer in Pucallpa said.

TANS, founded in the 1960s by the Peruvian air force to help serve remote jungle communities, started as a commercial airline in 1998. It has around 30 percent of the local market, focusing on routes often neglected by its competitors.

:(

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