26 die in Cuban plane crash

Peter Zimeri, director of civil aviation in Guatemala city, said it was not immediately clear what caused the accident but that an investigation would be launched.

The Cubana de Aviacion DC-10 jet was carrying 314 people on board, including 18 crew when it crashed on Tuesday, authorities said adding that among the victims nine died on the spot itself. Most of the passengers were Guatemalan students of Latin American Medical Science School in Havana who were returning home forChristmas.

The crash severed the plane’s cockpit and the first-class passenger’s area from the rest of the plane, he said.

Rescue workers, including military personnel, cordoned off the area to prevent fuel spilled from the plane from causing a fire.

Guatemala’s international airport is at the edge of a plateau, with houses built slightly below the level of the airport, at the end of the runway.

Emergency workers pulled bloody survivors from the wreckage as shocked neighbours wept nearby. Clothes and shoes from burst suitcases were scattered throughout the area.

One of the students on the plane, Carlos Flores, said the aircraft landed without any problem but then was unable to stop.

"We landed and then there was like a vacuum. The plane started to slide off and we fell into a small ravine," said Flores, the President of a student group from the Latin American medical school.

"We knew something like this was going to happen sometime. It’s something we are always thinking about – that a plane isgoing to fall on top of us," said a resident of the neighbourhood where the plane cracked.

The neighbourhood has been hit before. On April 28, 1995, ADC-8 cargo plane overshot the runway and smashed into a house in La Libertad, killing six people.

And in April 1993, a Taca Airlines Boeing 767 jet ran off a rain-slicked runway at the same airport and crashed into the nearby houses, but there were no serious injuries.

Cubana De Aviacion began flying between Havana and Guatemala city in June with three weekly round-trip flights.

Cubana’s last major accident was in August 1998, when 81 people in Ecuador were killed in a crash blamed on human error. In that accident, the Russian-made Tupolev 154m careened off the runway and exploded while attempting takeoff from Quito airport.