Plane car­ry­ing soc­cer team from Brazil crashes

Daily Freeman (Kingston, NY) - - NATION+WORLD -

A char­tered air­craft with 81 peo­ple on board, in­clud­ing a Brazil­ian first di­vi­sion soc­cer team head­ing to Colom­bia for a re­gional tour­na­ment fi­nal, has crashed on its way to Medellin’s in­ter­na­tional air­port.

Avi­a­tion au­thor­i­ties said there are re­ports of at least six sur­vivors, with a lo­cal mayor con­firm­ing at least three pas­sen­gers were found alive. The Bri­tish Aerospace 146 short-haul plane, op­er­ated by a char­ter air­line named LaMia, de­clared an emer­gency at 10 p.m. Mon­day be­cause of an elec­tri­cal fail­ure.

“It’s a tragedy of huge pro­por­tions,” Medellin Mayor Fed­erico Gu­tier­rez told Blu Ra­dio.

The air­craft, which had de­parted from Santa Cruz, Bo­livia, was trans­port­ing the first di­vi­sion Chapecoense soc­cer team from south­ern Brazil. The team was sched­uled to play to­day in the first of a two-game Copa Su­damer­i­cana fi­nal against Atletico Na­cional of Medellin.

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