All 20 people on board a privately-owned aircraft were killed after it crashed in Pakistan, while a Cuban airliner crashed with 68 people aboard.
A Cuban airliner flying from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital crashed after declaring an emergency Thursday evening with 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners, state media reported. There was no immediate word on whether any survived.
AeroCaribbean Flight 883 went down near the village of Guasimal in Santi Spiritus province, carrying 61 passengers and a crew of seven, state television said. It said 28 passengers were foreigners, but did not give a breakdown of nationalities.
State media said the names of those on board would be released later.
The twice-a-week flight goes from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Santiago de Cuba to Havana. It had been due to land in the Cuban capital at 7:50 p.m, but reported an emergency at 5:42 p.m. and subsequently lost contact with air traffic controllers.
State media said that the plane was an ATR-72 twin turboprop and that the crash site was not far from the Zaza reservoir, the largest in Cuba. It said authorities had mobilized doctors and emergency workers in the rural area, which is about 220 miles (350 kilombers) east of Havana.
At Havana\'s national terminal, relatives of those on board the plane were kept isolated from other passengers and journalists.
"This is very sad," said Caridad de las Mercedes Gonzalez, who was manning an airport information desk. "We are very worried. This has taken us by surprise."
State media gave no details on what happened to the airliner, saying only that the cause of the crash was being investigated.
The flight would have been one of the last leaving Santiago de Cuba for Havana ahead of Tropical Storm Tomas, which was on a track to pass between Cuba\'s eastern end and the western coast of Haiti on Friday. Cuban media said earlier that flights and train service to Santiago were being suspended until the storm passed.
AeroCaribbean is owned by Cuban state airline Cubana de Aviacion.
Crash in Pakistan killed all 20 people on board
A privately-owned aircraft belonging to an oil company crashed Friday soon after taking off from the Pakistani city of Karachi killing all 20 people on board, a military spokesman said.
The plane came down near a residential area in the Gulistan-e-Jauhar suburb of Karachi.
The aircraft was carrying company employees to an oil field at Bhit Shah in the southern province of Sindh, of which Karachi is the capital.
"It was a small plane and there were about 20 people on board. It was a privately-owned aircraft belonging to an oil company," Aviation authority spokesman Pervez George told Geo TV.
"Soon after they left, they contacted the airport control tower and said there was a problem in one of the engines. The plane was directed to return and soon after it crashed," he said.
