Jakarta: An Indonesian military transport plane crashed into a hotel and houses in Medan on Tuesday shortly after take-off in a city on Sumatra island, an official said, with the plane exploding in a ball of flames.
“The latest information we have is that 30 have died…. The number could go up,” Hisar Turnip, a spokesman for Indonesia’s search and rescue agency, told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how many of the victims were in the plane or on the ground.
The plane was on its way from an air force base in Medan to the remote Natuna islands and crashed a few minutes after takeoff.
“A Hercules was… transporting military logistics from Medan,” military spokesman Fuad Basya told AFP.
The plane took off at 12.08pm local time (05.08 GMT) from an airforce base and crashed in the city just two minutes later, about 5km (three miles) from the base, he said.
The Hercules C-130 was being piloted by Captain Sandy Permana from Squadron 32 Abdul Rahman Saleh, Malang, East Java. His co-pilot was Captain Riri Setiawan.
Hospital sources said it received 20 bodies so far. At least two people from a nearby neighborhood are critically injured.
Air force chief, Air Marshall Agus Supriatna, said the pilot told the control tower that the plane needed to turn back because of engine trouble.
“The plane crashed while it was turning right to return to the airport,” Supriatna said.
There were 17 military personnel on the plane, he said.
This is the second time in 10 years that an airplane has crashed into a Medan neighborhood. In September 2005, a Mandala Airlines Boeing 737 crashed shortly after takeoff from Medan’s Polonia airport, into a crowded residential
community, killing 143 people including 30 on the ground.
Medan, with about 3.4 million people, is the third most populous city in Indonesia after the capital Jakarta and Surabaya. -Agencies