Plane crash kills Spanish troops
A Ukranian plane crashed in Turkey early Monday killing all 74 people on board, including 62 Spanish soldiers, Turkish television reported.
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| The plane departed from Kyrgyztan and crashed in Turkey |
The Ukranian Yak-42 plane, with 12 crew members, was flying the Spanish troops home from a peacekeeping mission in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The plane crashed in a rural area as it tried to land at an airport in Trabzon, a city near the Black Sea, in heavy fog.
It was heading to Zaragoza in Spain from the Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.
Rescuer teams were at the site in the mountainous region of northeastern Turkey, the Ukranian Emergencies Ministry said.
Television stations broadcast footage of the crashed plane, showing charred wreckage strewn over a foggy hillside.
A cleric at a mosque in a nearby village, Sait Topcu, said he had heard a loud explosion and rushed to the scene. “There were flames everywhere. I couldn’t get close to it for 15 to 20 minutes,” he told the CNN Turk news channel.