A small passenger aircraft crashed seconds after taking off from a Caribbean island close to mainland Honduras on Monday, killing all however 5 of the 17 individuals on board, the authorities stated. Amongst these killed was Aurelio Martínez, a preferred Honduran musician and politician, his report label said in a statement.
The Jetstream 32 plane was carrying 15 passengers and two crew members when it departed Monday night from an airport on the island of Roatán, the civil aeronautics company of Honduras said in a statement. The flight’s vacation spot was La Ceiba, a close-by metropolis on the nation’s northern coast, the company stated.
The Nationwide Police of Honduras said on social media that 12 individuals aboard the aircraft had died and 5 had survived. The survivors have been pulled from the ocean by fishermen who have been working close to the crash website, stated Franklin Borjas, the hearth chief for the municipality of Santos Guardiola, close to the place the crash passed off.
Aldair Alemán, one of many fishermen, told a neighborhood information channel that after the crash, he started seeing our bodies within the water. He then realized that a few of the individuals have been alive, drowning and begging for assist. He and one other fisherman started pulling them into their small boat, rescuing 4 individuals earlier than handing them off to firefighters, he stated.
“They have been in a second of shock — they only needed to get on the boat” he stated. Some individuals had bones protruding from their our bodies, he stated; others had extreme facial accidents.
Movies posted by the nationwide police on social media present rescue staff lining up on the rocky shoreline and pulling individuals from the water, then laying them on stretchers.
The authorities have been nonetheless making an attempt to tug out the physique of the co-pilot, which remained trapped underwater contained in the aircraft, Mr. Borjas stated. Recovering the plane’s fuselage and black field would take extra time, Mr. Borjas added, as a result of the world the place the aircraft crashed is surrounded by reefs, making navigation tough.
The 5 individuals who survived the crash have been transported by aircraft to a hospital within the metropolis of San Pedro Sula, Mr. Borjas stated.
Mr. Martínez, a singer and songwriter, was one of many largest performers and proponents of the music of the Garifuna individuals, descendants of Indigenous Caribbean tribes and enslaved Africans who settled on the Caribbean coast of Central America.
He was the founding father of Lita Ariran, one of many first Garifuna teams to carry out on an internationally distributed recording, in accordance with his report label, Actual World Data. He later turned one of many first Black representatives within the Nationwide Congress, the Honduran legislature.
“Aurelio was greater than only a musician — he was a statesman, a spokesperson and very important savior of the tradition of the Garifuna individuals of Honduras,” his report label wrote within the assertion. “His loss will probably be felt past the Garifuna individuals to audiences worldwide who love and cherish Caribbean tradition.”
The reason for the crash was not instantly clear. The civil aeronautics company stated that an investigation had begun.
Roatán, about 35 miles from the Honduran mainland, is the biggest of the Bay Islands and is a popular Caribbean destination for divers looking for pristine coral reefs.
