Medan, Indonesia---An Indonesian air force transport plane crashed Tuesday into a residential area of a major city shortly after take-off, exploding in a fireball and killing at least 20 people.
Buildings near the crash zone were severely damaged and cars were reduced to flaming wrecks when the Hercules C-130 with 12 crew members on board came down in Medan, a city of two million on the island of Sumatra.
A major rescue operation swung into action, with ambulances ferrying bodies from the accident site, and crowds of anxious residents gathering around a police cordon to get a look.
Novi, who works at an international school near the accident site and goes by one name, said she heard the aircraft and from her office window saw it flying very low before it crashed.
"It was very scary," she told AFP, adding she rushed to the site with her colleagues but the wreckage and plumes of smoke looked "very bad".
Another local resident Januar, 26, said the aircraft appeared to be in trouble just before the accident.
"I saw the plane from the direction of the airport and it was tilting already, then I saw smoke billowing."
A hospital in Medan said 20 bodies had so far been brought in. It was not immediately clear how many were of those recovered had been on the plane and how many were people on the ground.
"Twenty bodies have arrived at the hospital's morgue," Sairi Saragih, spokeswoman for the Adam Malik hospital, told AFP.
- Poor air safety record -
Local media reported that the crew of the plane, which had been transporting military supplies to airbases, consisted of three pilots, one navigator and eight technicians.
The crash was in a newly built residential area and officials said it was unclear how many people were in the buildings at the time of the accident.
"The bodies have been crushed by debris of the buildings and the fuselage," said local police chief Mardiaz Dwihananto, adding they were being ferried one by one to hospital.
Military spokesman Fuad Basya said the plane took off at 12:08 pm (0508 GMT) from an air force base and crashed in the city about two minutes later, about five kilometres (three miles) from the base.
It was the second time in a decade that Medan had suffered a fatal plane accident. A Mandala Airlines domestic flight crashed shortly after takeoff in 2005 into a densely populated suburb, killing at least 150 including passengers, crew and people on the ground.
Medan is the biggest Indonesian city outside the main island of Java and a major economic centre.
AFP
