Mexico City: A Aero-Caribbean flight crashed in the central province of Sancti Spiritus on Thursday afternoon. The plane was flying to Havana after taking off from Santiago de Cuba. The crash took place in the mountains and among the dense thorny trees. This made the rescue work more difficult. There are no survivors. The dead included sixty one passengers and seven crew members.

Officials said that they were unsure about the reason of the crash. Cuba’s civil aviation said that there were no survivors and the dead had 28 foreigners, mostly Europeans and Latin Americans.

ATR 72-212 twin turboprop plane had reported an emergency. But soon after that it lost all contact with the air traffic controllers. Eyewitnesses said the plane crashed after making several brusque movements.

The dense vegetation delayed the rescue work. Bulldozers were called in, they cleared the path. Only after this the rescue work started. In the meantime the wreckage had burned for hours.

The Cuban government said that the cause of crash is being investigated. They are trying to conclude the reason from the black boxes.

This flight was the last flight from Santiago. All flights after this were cancelled due to Hurricane Tomas. But there were no reports of any kind of bad weather.

The dead bodies are burnt so badly that they couldn’t be recognised. So the bodies were sent to Havana’s Institute of Forensic Medicine for identification.

The plane manufacturer ATR said they will cooperate and help the investigation.  This plane was manufactured by the joint venture of Italian Alenia Aeronautica and French EADS.

Cuba has seen only a few plane crashes. Last crash took place in 2002, when a small plane had crashed. It was carrying four crew members and twelve foreign tourists. Cuba had seen the most deadly crash in 1989 when a plane shortly after taking off had crashed killing 126 people on board and another 24 on the ground.