Hi-tech Cuban airliner crashes

alledan

HAVANA, Cuba -- Investigators are at the scene of a plane crash in Cuba in which all 17 people on board were killed. Among the dead were 13 tourists, including two Germans, six Canadians and five Britons. Four Cubans also died when the Soviet-made single-engine Antonov AN-2, crashed on Thursday night near Santa Clara, the capital of Villa Clara province. A doctor from Santa Clara's Arnaldo Milan Castro Hospital told The Associated Press that he had been to the crash site and confirmed that 17 had died. There were no survivors, he said. The doctor, who did not give his name, said police and rescue teams were still working to retrieve the bodies. The AN-2 model, the world's largest bi-plane, was operated by a local charter company called Aerotaxi. Mia Yen, spokeswoman for Canada's Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa, said the Cuban authorities had told the Canadian Embassy in Havana that the plane was travelling from the central city of Cienfuegos to Cayo Coco on the main island's northern coast. A spokesman for the UK Foreign Office in London said it was following up reports of British victims. In November 1996, 13 people were killed when an Antonov AN-2 crashes in the semi-autonomous region of Komi in northern Russia. In June 1995, at least 12 people died when an Antonov AN-2 single-engined propeller plane crashed in bad weather in Russia's Far East on a flight from Poliny Osipenko, in the Khabarovsk region, to the city of Nikolayevsk-on-Amur.