Airliner Crashes In Ecuador

A Cuban plane carrying 90 people burst into flames Saturday during takeoff and slammed into a soccer field, killing at least 76 people, civil aviation authorities said.

The jetliner barely missed a busy street in a middle-income residential area at the end of the runway, which lies at 9,300 feet (2,834 meters) in the Andes mountains.

Witnesses said the Russian-made Tupolev-154 aircraft owned by Cubana de Aviacion clipped the top of a car mechanic's shop beyond the end of the runway and plowed into a soccer field. The nose and front part of the plane disintegrated in the crash.

Red Cross workers in red uniforms dug through the wreckage for survivors while fire fighters sprayed jets of water on the smoking ruins to prevent further explosions.

Ecuadorean television stations reported that at least five survivors were pulled from the wreckage, but that could not be confirmed.

Officials gave no cause for the crash. nor did they specify if the toll included people killed on the ground. One woman said three of her children, who were playing near the crash site, were missing.

Four people died when the plane struck the auto mechanic's shop, a local radio station reported.

The flight was headed to Guayaquil, on the Ecuadorean coast, and then on to Havana.

At least 19 foreigners, including Cubans, Chileans, Italians, Spaniards, one Argentine and one Jamaican, were killed, said Gen. Osvaldo Dominguez, director of the Civil Aviation Office, as he left the morgue.

Red Cross official Galo Leoro said the plane had just started taking off when apparently at least one motor failed and the airliner crashed several hundred yards (meters) beyond the end of the runway at Quito's Mariscal Sucre International Airport.

Dominguez said there were 76 passengers and 14 crew members on board.

"There must be many dead, but there are also survivors. I pulled one person out alive," said civil defense volunteer Hugo Albuja.

Channel 10 television interviewed Cuban survivor Hernan Boada, 27, who had burnt hair and a fractured ankle.

"Before we heard the roar of the crash, we felt the plane rise a bit and burst in flames. There were three explosions," Boada said. "I saw other people wrapped in flames jump from the plane."

"I was in seat number 21, a window seat at wing level. The doors would not open, so I jumped through a hole in the plane amid the flames from a height of about two yards (meters)," he said.

Boada said that "people nearby, in a soccer field, helped me get away from the plane fearing explosions."

President Jamil Mahuad went to the crash site and told reporters he was asking investigators to complete studies as soon as possible for building an airport outside the capital.

People have often complained about the danger posed by a large airport in a heavily populated residential area.

In 1984, an Ecuadorean cargplane slammed into a neighborhood beyond the end of the runway after failing to gain altitude, killing 65 people.

And in 1996, a Brazilian FLY airlines plane carrying a Brazilian soccer team crashed into airport walls after one of the jet turbines flamed out and the crew aborted the takeoff. One player was slightly injured.

By Carlos Cisternas