A Cuban airliner flying from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital crashed in mountains after declaring an emergency Thursday evening

No survivors in Cuba airliner crash

HAVANA (AP): A Cuban airliner flying from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital crashed in mountains after declaring an emergency Thursday evening, killing all 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners, authorities said.

AeroCaribbean Flight 883 went down near the village of Guasimal in Santi Spiritus province, carrying 61 passengers and a crew of seven.

Cuba's Civil Aviation Authority issued a statement early Friday saying there were no survivors. It released a list of passengers that included nine Argentines, seven Mexicans, three Dutch citizens, two Germans, two Austrians, a French citizen, an Italian, a Spaniard, a Venezuelan and a Japanese.

A photo posted on the website of the local newspaper, Escambray, showed a large piece of the plane in flames, with rescue workers in olive-green military uniforms standing around it. It said the local Communist Party chief as well as Interior Ministry and other officials were at the scene helping with the effort.

The twice-a-week flight goes from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Santiago de Cuba to Havana. It 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 kilometers) 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," Caridad de las Mercedes Gonzalez, who was manning an airport information desk, said before officials announced that everyone had been killed. "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.

The last passenger plane crash on the island occurred in March 2002, when a Soviet-made biplane carrying 16 people - including 12 foreigners - plunged into a small reservoir in central Cuba. The plane was operated by a small local charter company called Aerotaxi.