Deadly Plane Crash In Tunisia

(CBS)  Egyptian officials said there were at least 18 deaths in the crash of an EgyptAir jet into a hillside in Tunisia. Tunisia's national news agency, TAP, said the death toll was at least 14.

The Boeing 737 with 63 people aboard – 54 passengers and eight crew members – crashed Tuesday while trying to land near Tunis in bad weather.

The Egyptian ambassador in Tunis, Mahdi Fattallah, said on Al Jazeera TV that there were 18 deaths so far and that 25 people were hospitalized. He said the pilot survived but the co-pilot died.

EgyptAir station chief in Tunisia, Assem Hemdan, was quoted by airline officials in Cairo as saying 18 people had died, 30 were injured, and 14 escaped unharmed. TAP, meanwhile, said there were at least 14 deaths.

It was not immediately possible to reconcile the reports.

EgyptAir's vice president for safety, Shaker Qilada, denied reports that the plane, which was coming from Cairo, was making an emergency landing.

"It was not an emergency landing," Qilada told The Associated Press in Cairo. "It was a normal landing approach."

"We have spoken to people on board" since the crash, he added.

Authorities said the passengers included: 20 Egyptians, 17 Tunisians, five Pakistanis, three Algerians, three Jordanians, two Chinese, one Briton, one Saudi, one Palestinian, and one Libyan. There were eight crew members, all Egyptian.

Weather was foggy and rainy at the time, with a sandy wind blowing from the Sahara desert. The sandy wind is known in Arabic as "khamsin," a name rooted in the Arabic word for the number 50. It refers to 50 days each year when winds blow sand from the desert, creating a suffocating, dirty blanket of air that hangs over the sky.

EgyptAir last suffered a major air disaster on Oct. 31, 1999, when a Boeing 767 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean off the Massachusetts island of Nantucket, killing all 217 people aboard.

Before 1999, it had been 23 years since EgyptAir had a major crash. In 1976, an EgyptAir plane crashed during approach to the Bangkok, Thailand airport, killing 72 passengers and crew members. In 1985, Egyptian troops stormed an EgyptAir plane being held by hijackers in Malta. Sixty passengers and crew were killed.