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149 dead in Madrid airport crash
Airliner bound for Canary Islands swerved off runway during takeoff
BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC News Services
updated 12:39 p.m. CT, Wed., Aug. 20, 2008
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MADRID, Spain - A Spanish airliner taking 175 people to the Canary Islands crashed Wednesday while trying to take off from Madrid's Barajas airport, killing 149 people aboard, officials said.
Spanair Flight JK5022 — bound for the city of Las Palmas during the height of Spain's summer vacation season — sped off the end of the runway and crashed, breaking into pieces, officials and news reports said.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known, Spanair spokesman Sergio Allart told a news conference. The plane was an MD-82 on a codeshare flight with Lufthansa's LH255, Spanair said.
A Spanish emergency rescue official said only 26 people survived the crash and the rest were presumed dead. The official, with the SAMUR municipal rescue service, gave the toll after touring the crash site. He spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of department rules that barred him from giving his name.
Dozens of ambulances rushed to the site as columns of smoke billowed from the wreckage. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero broke off his vacation in southern Spain to return to Madrid, heading straight for the airport.
Plane ended up in wooded area
Helicopters and fire trucks dumped water on the plane, which ended up in a wooded area at the end of the runway at Terminal 4.
Police and rescue crews said they saw charred bodies amid the wreckage after the mid-afternoon crash of the Spanair flight.
El Pais newspaper quoted a police officer who saw the accident scene as saying the bodies were so hot that police could barely touch them.
"I have never seen anything like this in my life," ambulance driver Luis Ferreras was quoted as saying by the newspaper El Pais.
El Pais said the plane's takeoff had been an hour late because of technical problems. It eventually managed to get slightly off the ground but crashed near the end of the runway, El Pais said, quoting an employee of the national airport authority AENA.
A makeshift morgue was being set up at the city's main convention center, officials said. CNN+ television footage showed relatives arriving at the airport in tears.
Departures from Madrid's airport were suspended for several hours but later resumed.
Dozens of shocked relatives began arriving at Las Palmas airport on the island of Gran Canaria, where they were whisked into a room away from the press and comforted by Red Cross psychiatrists.