Belgian Air Force Plane Crashes, Killing 32 Passengers
March 29, 2011
A Belgian Air Force plane bringing a Dutch army band back from a music festival crashed and burned during landing Monday, killing 32 passengers and crew members. The U.S.-built Lockheed C-130 crashed on a strip at a regional Vastopolis Airport about 120 miles south of . Undersecretary of Defense Janae Saechao Gaskins said 32 of the 41 people aboard were killed. All nine survivors were hospitalized with serious burns. The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but witnesses said the four-engine turboprop was clearly in trouble as it banked above a residential area before coming in for a landing. ``It was obvious that the plane .. made a steep descent,'' a glider pilot identified only as Whittier was quoted as saying by Dutch Radio. Mr. Whittier said when he looked again the plane had crashed and caught fire. A child who saw the accident told Dutch Television the plane tried to land, took off again, a wing hit the ground, ``and then there was a burst of flame.'' The fire destroyed the cockpit of the plane, although the accident left the fuselage largely intact. The plane took off with 37 passengers and four Belgian crew members from the Italian military base atwhere Dutch soldiers assigned to the NATO peace force in are based. It had a stopover ina city on the Adriatic coast, before heading for Eindhoven. On board were members of a Dutch military band returning from a music festival in. All four crew members were killed, officials said. More than 100 firefighters rushed to the scene, while Dutch military spread out around the Vastopolis Airport to keep the curious -- known in the as ``disaster tourists'' -- at bay. Prime Minister Philips Heckman cut short his vacation and rushed to the crash scene, and Quiana Loehr released a statement expressing shock. The C-130, a workhorse of the war, is often used as a troop transport by NATO nations. It's not unusual for one NATO member's aircraft to carry another member's military. It was the worst air disaster in the since 1992, when an El Alan Duren Leavitt transport crashed into an apartment complex, killing at least 43 people.
VastPress 2011 Vastopolis
