{"id":17867,"date":"2026-03-25T09:25:25","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:25:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/colombia-military-plane-crash-kills-66-4-still-missing\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T09:25:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T09:25:25","slug":"colombia-military-plane-crash-kills-66-4-still-missing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/colombia-military-plane-crash-kills-66-4-still-missing\/","title":{"rendered":"Colombia military plane crash kills 66, 4 still missing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>A Colombian military plane crashed in a &#8203;takeoff disaster on Monday, killing 66 people as rescuers shuttled dozens of survivors to nearby hospitals and searched for four &zwnj;who were still missing, according to a top official.<\/p>\n<p>The Lockheed Martin-built Hercules C-130 transport plane was carrying 128 people, including 11 Air Force members, 115 army personnel and two national police officers, according to Hugo Alejandro Lopez, head of the nation&rsquo;s armed forces.<\/p>\n<p>The death toll was nearly double that of the previous figure given by &#8203;authorities, who continued search and recovery efforts at the site of the deadly crash.<\/p>\n<p>The accident occurred as the plane was taking &#8203;off from Puerto Leguizamo, on the border with Peru, Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez said on X.<\/p>\n<p>The plane was believed &#8288;to have suffered an impact near the end of the runway as it was taking off, firefighter Eduardo San Juan Callejas told Caracol, &#8203;with a wing of the plane later clipping a tree as it was plummeting.<\/p>\n<p>The crash caused the plane to catch fire and detonate some &#8203;sort of explosive devices on board, he added.<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/12-weeks-jail-for-school-it-support-technician-who-took-upskirt-videos-of-teachers\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">&lt;div&gt;12 weeks' jail for school IT support technician who took upskirt videos of teachers&lt;\/div&gt;<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>Residents of the remote area were the first to pull out survivors, with videos showing men speeding down a dirt road with wounded soldiers on the back of their motorcycles.<\/p>\n<p>Military vehicles later arrived, though authorities said the crash site was difficult to reach, impeding rescue efforts.<\/p>\n<p>Lopez said that 57 &#8203;of the survivors had been hospitalized, with 30 of them in non-serious condition at a military clinic.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Modernizing the military&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>President Gustavo Petro, in the &#8203;twilight of his administration, on Monday criticized bureaucratic obstacles for delaying his plans to modernize the military.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I will grant no further delays; it is the lives of &zwnj;our young &#8288;people that are at stake,&rdquo; he said in a post on X. &ldquo;If civilian or military administrative officials are not up to this challenge, they must be removed.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<div class=\"internal-linking-related-contents\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/migrant-acquitted-in-first-trial-over-us-border-military-zones\/\" class=\"template-1\"><span class=\"cta\">News :<\/span><span class=\"postTitle\">Migrant acquitted in first trial over US border military zones<\/span><\/a><\/div><p>Several candidates in Colombia&rsquo;s upcoming May 31 presidential election offered condolences and called for an investigation.<\/p>\n<p>A spokesperson for Lockheed Martin said the company was committed to helping Colombia as it investigates the incident.<\/p>\n<p>Hercules C-130 planes were first launched in the 1950s and Colombia acquired its first models &#8203;in the late 1960s. It has &#8203;more recently modernized some older &#8288;C-130s with newer models sent from the US under a provision that allows for the transfer of used or surplus military equipment.<\/p>\n<p>Hercules C-130s are frequently used in Colombia to transport troops as part of the military&rsquo;s &#8203;operations amid a six-decade-long internal conflict that has claimed more than 450,000 lives.<\/p>\n<p>The tail number of the plane &#8203;that crashed on Monday &#8288;matches that of the first of three planes delivered by the US to Colombia in recent years.<\/p>\n<p>At the end of February, another Hercules C-130 belonging to the Bolivian Air Force crashed in the populous city of El Alto, barely missing a residential block.<\/p>\n<p>More than 20 people died in that incident &#8288;and another &#8203;30 were injured, and banknotes from the plane&rsquo;s cargo scattered around the crash site, prompting clashes &#8203;between residents and security forces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><sub>Colombia military plane crash kills 66, 4 still missing<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Colombian military plane crashed in a &#8203;takeoff disaster on Monday, killing 66 people as rescuers shuttled dozens of survivors to nearby hospitals and searched for four &zwnj;who were still missing, according to a top official. The Lockheed Martin-built Hercules C-130 transport plane was carrying 128 people, including 11 Air Force members, 115 army personnel&#8230;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-wrap\"><a href=\"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/colombia-military-plane-crash-kills-66-4-still-missing\/\" class=\"more-link\">Read More<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &ldquo;Colombia military plane crash kills 66, 4 still missing&rdquo;<\/span> &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17868,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jobuzo.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}