Philippine military’s worst air disaster kills 50

Philippine troops found the last five people killed by the crash of a transport aircraft in the south, raising the death toll to 50 in the military’s worst air disaster, officials said on Monday.

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules was carrying 96 mostly combat troops when it overshot the runway while landing on Sunday at the Jolo airport in Sulu province, military officials said. It slammed into a coconut grove beyond the airport and burst into flames in a noontime disaster witnessed by horrified soldiers and villagers.

Troops, police and firefighters rescued 49 military personnel, including a few who jumped off the aircraft before it exploded and was gutted by fire. All passengers have now been accounted for. Seven people on the ground were hit by aircraft parts and debris, and three of them died, the military said.

The Lockheed C-130 Hercules was one of two refurbished US Air Force aircraft handed over to the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia, as part of military assistance this year.

Those who boarded the C-130 in Cagayan de Oro for the flight to Sulu were army troops, many of them newly trained recruits, to be deployed in the battle against Abu Sayyaf fighters in the south.

It was not immediately clear what caused the crash and investigators were looking for the C-130’s black boxes containing the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.

Before Sunday, the Philippine air force’s deadliest disaster was a crash in a rice field north of Manila in 1971 that killed 40 military personnel, military historian Jose Custodio said.