15 dead, including lawmaker, in Colombia plane crash

BOGOTA, Colombia — An airplane carrying 15 people, including a lawmaker, crashed near Colombia’s border with Venezuela on Wednesday, killing all passengers and crew, Colombia’s civil aviation authority said.

The plane, which was operated by state airline Satena, took off from the border city of Cucuta and lost contact with control towers shortly before it was due to land in nearby Ocana around noon (1700GMT).

“There are no survivors,” an official from the aviation authority told AFP.

There were 13 passengers and two crew members aboard.

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The Cucuta area is mountainous with highly changeable weather and swaths are controlled by Colombia’s largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army, better known by its Spanish acronym ELN.

The government deployed the Air Force to search for the plane and recover the bodies.

One lawmaker and one legislative candidate are feared to have been aboard.

“We have received with concern the information about the air accident… where my colleague Diogenes Quintero, Carlos Salcedo and their teams were traveling,” local parliamentarian Wilmer Carrillo said.

Quintero is a member of Colombia’s chamber of deputies and Salcedo is a candidate for the upcoming elections.

The aircraft was a Beechcraft 1900 twin-propeller plane. /das