Cuban Jet Crashes in Ecuador, Killing 78

QUITO, Ecuador —  A Cuban commercial airplane burst into flames Saturday during takeoff and slammed into a soccer field, killing at least 78 people, authorities said.

At least 15 people survived the crash and were pulled from the wreckage, airport officials said.

The Russian-made Tupolev-154 aircraft owned by Cubana de Aviacion clipped the top of an auto mechanic’s shop beyond the end of the runway at Quito’s international airport, witnesses said.

The nose and front part of the plane were destroyed in the crash.

The jetliner barely missed a heavily traveled avenue at the end of the airport runway in a middle-class residential neighborhood, 9,300 feet above sea level, in the Andes mountains.

It was en route to Guayaquil, on the Ecuadorean coast, and then to Havana.

The plane had just begun its takeoff when apparently at least one engine failed and the aircraft crashed several hundred yards beyond the end of the runway, Red Cross official Galo Leoro said.

Gen. Osvaldo Dominguez, director of the Civil Aviation Office, said 76 passengers and 14 crew were on board. He said at least 19 foreigners were killed, including Cubans, Chileans, Italians, Spaniards, one Argentine and one Jamaican.

There were no reports of Americans among the dead.

Dominguez confirmed that the death toll included nine people who were killed on the ground, among them several children.

Red Cross workers dug through the charred wreckage for survivors, while firefighters sprayed jets of water on the smoking ruins of the plane to prevent further explosions.

Airport officials reported that at least 15 survivors were pulled from the wreckage at Quito’s Mariscal Sucre International Airport.

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

Channel 10 television interviewed Cuban survivor Hernan Boada, 27, who suffered a broken ankle.

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

One woman said that three of her children, who were playing near the crash site, were missing.