PLANE CRASH KILLS DOZENS, RAZES VILLAGE
A Turkish cargo plane crashed Monday in a residential area just outside the main airport in Kyrgyzstan, destroying half of a village and killing at least 37 people in the plane and on the ground, the Emergency Situations Ministry said.
The Boeing 747 crashed at 7: 40 a. m. local time while approaching Manas airport, south of the capital, Bishkek, in this Central Asian nation.
Footage from the scene showed the plane’s nose stuck inside a brick house and large chunks of debris scattered around. A dozen body bags were laid out in the yard of one home. A car parked nearby was mangled in the crash.
The bodies of 15 victims, including five children, all of them Kyrgyz citizens, had been identified by Monday evening, the Kyrgyz government said on its website.
Another 15 people, including six children, were hospitalized in the disaster, according to the health ministry.
Kyrgyz Emergency Situations Minister Kubatbek Boronov said 23 out of the 43 houses in the village had been destroyed. Several dozen homes were near the fence surrounding the runway.
The plane, which had departed from Hong Kong, belonged to the Istanbul-based cargo company ACT Airlines, which said the dead included the plane’s four Turkish crew members: two pilots, a freight expert and a flight technician.
The cause of the crash was not immediately clear.