Cuba official: 110 dead in crash, recorder found

Rescue workers gather Friday at the site near the Havana airport where a Cuban airliner plummeted into a cassava field and caught fire.
Rescue workers gather Friday at the site near the Havana airport where a Cuban airliner plummeted into a cassava field and caught fire.

HAVANA — The Latest on the crash in Cuba of a passenger jet with 113 people on board.

2:40 p.m.

Cuba's transportation minister says 110 people were killed in Friday's plane crash near Havana.

Adel Yzquierdo Rodriguez says 113 people were on board including 102 Cubans, three tourists, two foreign residents and six crew members who were from Mexico.

Three Cuban women survived but are in critical condition at a hospital.

Yzquierdo also said five children were among the dead.

He initially gave a death toll of 113 in a Saturday news conference but later corrected his statement.

Official website Cubadebate reported that a flight recorder from the plane had been located, citing Yzquierdo.

1:52 p.m.

The Cuban Council of Churches says 20 priests from an evangelical church are among the dead in the Havana plane crash.

"On that plane were 10 couples of pastors. 20 people. All of the Nazarene Church in the eastern region," confirmed Maite Quesada, a member of the council.

The group spent several days at a meeting in the capital and were returning to their homes and places of worship in the province of Holguin.

The plane crash Friday killed 107 people.

1:30 p.m.

The only three survivors of Cuba's worst aviation disaster in three decades are clinging to life a day after their passenger jet carrying 110 people crashed in a fireball in Havana's rural outskirts.

Carlos Alberto Martinez is director of the Calixto Garcia Hospital in the Cuban capital, where the three Cuban women are being treated. He says doctors are always hopeful that their patients will recover, but acknowledges that the women are in extremely grave condition.

Martinez says the women "present severe injuries" and their state is "critical."

Also Saturday, relatives of those who died gathered at a morgue in the capital, weeping and embracing each other.

Investigators are trying to piece together why the aging Boeing 737 went down and erupted in flames shortly after takeoff Friday.

photo

AP/ENRIQUE DE LA OSA

Emergency workers and others gather Friday where a 39-year-old jetliner carrying 110 people crashed right after taking off from Jose Marti International Airport outside Havana. Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel (bottom, second from left) said “a high number of people” appear to have been killed in the crash. Officials said only three people survived.

Upcoming Events