A military transport plane carrying 128 people, mostly soldiers, crashed shortly after takeoff Monday in Puerto Leguizamo, in Colombia’s Putumayo province, the head of Colombia’s armed forces said, leaving dozens injured and at least 66 dead. General Hugo Alejandro López Barreto said four military personnel remained missing and told reporters that investigators had not yet identified evidence that the crash was caused by an attack by an illegal armed group.
Deputy Mayor Carlos Claros said the bodies of the victims were taken to the small town’s morgue and that the injured were handled first in Puerto Leguizamo. He said the town’s only two clinics treated those hurt before they were flown to larger cities, as residents and local officials rushed to the scene after smoke rose from the crash site, according to media reports.
Defense Minister Pedro Sánchez said in a post on X that the plane was transporting troops to another city in Putumayo at the time of the crash. He also wrote that, so far, there were no signs indicating the aircraft had been attacked by rebel groups that operate near Puerto Leguizamo, adding that the accident was “profoundly painful for the country” and that “We hope that our prayers can help to relieve some of the pain.”
Air Force commander Carlos Fernando Silva said officials still did not have full details of what caused the crash, “except that the plane had a problem and went down about two kilometers from the airport.” Claros and other local accounts described residents rushing to the area as soldiers were carried away quickly, including on motorcycles, while some people tried to put out the fire that the crash created in a field surrounded by dense foliage.
The aircraft had 128 people on board, including 115 from the Army, 11 crew members and two from the National Police, López Barreto said. He said 57 people were evacuated, and Silva said two additional planes, with 74 beds, were dispatched to fly injured people back to hospitals in the capital, Bogota, and elsewhere.
President Gustavo Petro used the crash to renew a push for modernizing military aircraft and other equipment. He argued that such efforts have been blocked by “bureaucratic difficulties,” and said officials should be held accountable if they were not up to the challenge, adding that “If civilian or military administrative officials are not up to the challenge, they must be removed.” A Colombian aviation expert, Erich Saumeth, said the Hercules C-130 that crashed Monday had been donated by the United States in 2020 and later underwent an overhaul three years afterward, and he said he did not think the crash could be attributed to a lack of good parts, while noting investigators would still need to determine why the engines failed so quickly after takeoff.