Colombian military plane crash kills at least 66, wounds dozens

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - BOGOTA — A Colombian Air Force plane with 125 people on board crashed shortly after takeoff in the south of the country, leaving at least 66 people dead and dozens injured, officials said.
The Lockheed Martin-built C-130 Hercules aircraft went down on Monday shortly after it had departed from Puerto Leguizamo, near the southern border with Ecuador and Peru, strewing burning wreckage on the jungle floor.
Air force commander Carlos Fernando Silva Rueda said 114 army personnel were on board, as well as 11 crew.
Emergency workers sent to the area were seen searching through the wreckage for survivors. The cause of the crash was being investigated.
Minister of Defence Pedro Sanchez said the plane hit the ground just 1.5km (0.9 miles) away from where it took ⁠off, leading to the detonation of ammunition and setting the aircraft ablaze.
He described the incident near the border with Peru as "deeply sad for the country".
Ammunition being carried on board detonated as a result of a fire on the aircraft, Sanchez later said.
A military source told AFP that 58 soldiers had died, along with six air force personnel and two police officers.
The incident was one of the deadliest accidents in recent history for Colombia's Air Force.
Images shared by local media show a plume of smoke rising from the site and trucks carrying soldiers heading to the area.
Footage on local news sites also appears to show locals transporting what seem to be injured soldiers from the accident site to hospitals on the back of small motorbikes.
President Gustavo Petro wrote on X that "this horrendous accident ... should not have happened".
In the lengthy post, he also blamed "bureaucratic problems" for holding up his plans to modernize the armed forces' equipment and their aircraft.
"I will allow no further delays, the lives of our young people are at stake," he wrote, without clarifying what may have caused the accident.
Last month, a Bolivian Air Force C-130 Hercules transporting banknotes crashed in the west of the country, killing at least 20 people.
General Hugo Alejandro Lopez Barreto, the head of the Colombian armed forces, said four military personnel were missing.
“At the moment, we have no information or indications that it was an attack by an illegal armed group,” Barreto added.
In a video posted on social media, Deputy Mayor Carlos Claros said the victims’ bodies were taken to the small town’s morgue, and that the only two clinics in town treated the injured before they were flown to larger cities.
Rueda said earlier that two planes, with 74 beds, had been sent to the area to fly the injured back to hospitals in the capital, Bogota, and elsewhere.
Colombia acquired its first C-130 Hercules in the late 1960s and has more recently modernised some older C-130s with newer models sent from the United States. — Agencies