Plane crash in Turkey kills all 75 on board

The plane took off from the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek on Sunday and was flying to Zaragoza, Spain, Turkey’s state-run Anatolian news agency said. It was supposed to land at Trabzon airport to refuel before it crashed in a rural area, the agency added. ‘‘It was due to land here but it never did,’’ an official at Trabzon airport said. A Spanish Defence Ministry spokesman said: ‘‘We can confirm that 62 Spanish soldiers returning from Afghanistan died in the crash.’’ The ministry said it appeared bad weather was to blame. ‘‘The cause, according to initial indications, was the dense fog in the area. The plane tried to land due to the strong turbulence that was occurring during flight as a result of the bad meteorological conditions,’’ it said in a statement.

Defence Minister Federico Trillo was set to travel to Turkey on Monday with a team of forensic experts and an Air force accident investigation team, the ministry said.

Turkey’s Transportation Ministry said the plane had asked for permission to land at Trabzon to refuel, but communications had been lost when the plane was southwest of the airport.

The Pope and Afghanistan both sent messages of condolence. ‘‘The peacekeepers who perished in this tragic incident contributed towards world peace, but unfortunately paid with their lives…while heading back home,’’ Afghanistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement. The Pope expressed his sorrow in a telegram to the Bishop of Madrid.

Volodymyr Gorbanovsky, deputy general director of Mediterranean Airlines, the aircraft’s Ukrainian owners said, 13 crew were aboard. He said preliminary information indicated the plane had veered from its flight path because of fog. ‘‘At 4.20 local time (0120 GMT) they lost connection with the plane,’’ Gorbanovsky said.

Turkish authorities had earlier said there were 12 crew. Turkey’s NTV said there were no survivors. One witness told Anatolian he saw the plane on fire while it was still in the air. ‘‘When I looked at the sky, I saw a burning airplane. Around two minutes later, I heard two explosions, then a few more explosions,’’ villager Adil Yilmaz said.

Meanwhile, rescue workers said they were taking remains to Trabzon. Charred bodies were strewn across a steep hillside near the town of Macka, 35 km (22 miles) from Trabzon airport.

The plane was split into two large pieces, with the nose facing the top of the hill and the tail further down. Bits of smouldering wreckage were scattered across the wooded area. Firefighters were at the scene. NTV said the paramilitary police initially recovered 30 bodies.

An ID card found on the mountainside showed at least one of the dead was from a regiment based in Burgos, in northern Spain. The soldiers were mostly members of an engineers regiment based in Burgos and were in Afghanistan serving with the International Security Assistance Force monitoring Kabul for four months, El Mundo’s website said. (Reuters)