BOGOTA: At least six people are believed to have survived after a plane carrying 81 passengers, including members of a top flight Brazillian football team, crashed in Colombia, officials said.
The Jose Maria Cordova de Rionegro airport, which serves Medellin, said in a statement that “all possible aid was being mobilized because six survivors are being reported.”
The accident took place near the Colombian city of Medellin on Monday.
The airport that serves Medellin said that among the 72 passengers and nine crew members of Chapecoense Real, a Brazilian football club that was supposed to play against Colombia’s Atletico Nacional Wednesday in the South American Cup finals.
The LAMIA aircraft was flying from Bolivia to Medellin when it crashed in an area called Cerro Gordo about 50 kilometers from the city, Colombia’s second largest.
“It appears that the plane ran out of fuel,” Elkin Ospina, the mayor of the nearby town of La Ceja, told AFP. He said authorities were on the scene and hospitals and medical centers were preparing to receive the injured.
On its Twitter account, the Medellin airport said the crash site could only be reached overland because of bad weather in the area. Colombia’s civil aeronautics agency said it had a team at the airport in response to the crash.