Colombia Military Plane Crash Leads to Over 60 Dead, Several Others Injured

A military transport plane carrying 128 people crashed in Colombia on March 24, killing at least 66 people. The plane, which took off from Puerto Leguizamo on Tuesday, was reported to be carrying mostly soldiers. 

AP reported that the head of Colombia’s armed forces, General Hugo Alejandro López Barreto, said that four military personnel were still missing while several others were injured. “At the moment, we have no information or indications that it was an attack by an illegal armed group.

Puerto Leguizamo is located in Putumayo, an Amazonian province that borders Ecuador and Peru. Colombia’s Minister of Defence Pedro Sánchez said the plane that crashed Monday was transporting troops to another city in Putumayo. 

Images shared online by Colombian media outlets showed a black cloud of smoke rising from a field where the plane crashed and a truck with soldiers rushing to the site.

Of the people on the plane, 115 were from the Army, 11 were crew members, and two were from the National Police, with 57 people having been evacuated. Erich Saumeth, a Colombian aviation expert and military analyst, stated that the Hercules C-130 that crashed on Monday had been donated by the US in 2020. Three years later, it went through a detailed revision known as an overhaul, in which its engines were inspected, and key components were replaced. This crash followed an Air Canada plane ploughing into a fire truck while landing at New York's LaGuardia Airport this week, killing two. The plane, a CRJ 900 model that had about 70 people on board, suffered significant damage, with two crew members said to have died.