Official death toll of Cuban crash at 110; 3 survivors

HAVANA — The only three survivors of Cuba’s worst aviation disaster in three decades were clinging to life Saturday, a day after their passenger jet crashed in a fireball in Havana’s rural outskirts with 113 people on board.

The official website Cubadebate reported, citing Transportation Minister Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez, that a flight recorder had been located.

In the first official death toll provided by authorities, Yzquierdo said 110 had died, including five children. He said those on board included 102 Cubans, three tourists, two foreign residents and six crew members from Mexico. Maite Quesada, a member of the Cuban Council of Churches, said 20 pastors from an evangelical church were among the dead. They had spent several days at a meeting in the capital and were returning to their homes and places of worship in the province of Holguin.

Carlos Alberto Martinez, director of Havana’s Calixto Garcia Hospital, said the three Cuban women were in extremely grave condition.

Relatives of the dead gathered at a morgue in the capital, weeping and embracing each other, as investigators tried to piece together why the aging Boeing 737 went down and erupted in flames shortly after takeoff early Friday afternoon.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said a special commission had been formed to find the cause of the crash.

The Mexican charter company whose plane crashed has been the subject of two serious complaints about its crews’ performance over the past decade, according to authorities in Guyana and a retired pilot for Cuba’s national airline.

The plane was barred from Guyanese airspace last year after authorities discovered that its crew had been allowing dangerous overloading of luggage on flights to Cuba, Guyanese Civil Aviation Director Capt. Egbert Field said Saturday.