A Philippines Air Force plane has crashed in flames killing at least 50 people, with some jumping from the fuselage in the country’s worst military air disaster in nearly 30 years.
The Lockheed C-130 transport aircraft carrying troops bound for counter-insurgency operations crashed with 96 aboard shortly before noon on Sunday at Bangkal village in Sulu province.
All 96 have now been accounted for, military chief Cirilito Sobejana said on Monday, with 47 confirmed dead and 49 injured.
The plane had attempted to land at Jolo airport, but overshot the runway.
“A number of soldiers were seen jumping out of the aircraft before it hit the ground, sparing them from the explosion caused by the crash,” the Joint Task Force Sulu said in a statement.
Military chief Cirilito Sobejana said the plane had “missed the runway trying to regain power”.
Three civilians on the ground were also killed, and four were injured, a spokesperson for the Department of National Defence said.
A military spokesman, Colonel Edgard Arevalo, said there was no sign of any attack on the plane, but a crash investigation had yet to begin and efforts were focused on rescue and treatment.
The military command said the soldiers aboard were flying to the provincial airport of Jolo from Laguindingan, about 460km to the northeast.
Jolo airport has a 1200-metre runway that usually takes civilian turboprop aircraft though occasionally some military flights, according to a Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines spokesperson.
Jolo island, part of the Sulu archipelago, is about 950km south of the capital, Manila.
The Lockheed C-130H Hercules aircraft, with registration 5125, had only recently arrived in the Philippines.
It was one of two aircraft provided by the US government through the Defence Security Cooperation Agency, a government website said in January.
The website C-130.net said the plane that crashed had first flown in 1988. The model is a workhorse for armed forces around the world.
The Philippines armed forces have a patchy air safety record. Last month a Black Hawk helicopter crashed during a training mission, killing six people.
A Philippines Air Force C-130 incident in 1993 killed 30 people, while a 2008 crash of the civilian variant of the Lockheed plane flown by the Philippines Air Force killed 11 people, the Aviation Safety Network says.
The country’s worst plane crash was that of an Air Philippines Boeing 737 in 2000, which killed 131 people.
AAP
