16 killed in air crash

Press, 4 January 1988, Page 6

16 killed in air crash

NZPA-Reuter Istanbul A West German airliner crashed in the dark into mountains on the Turkish coast on Saturday, killing all 11 Turkish passengers and five West German crew members, airline officials said. The Boeing 737, which took off from Stuttgart, crashed after sending a radio message saying it had begun its descent to Izmir's Adnan Menderes airport, newly opened in November, the Anatolian

News Agency said. Senior officials at Condor, the Lufthansa charter subsidiary that owns the airliner, said the cause of the crash was not known but noted that the plane hit mountains in an area of total darkness. "It was raining. We heard an explosion, the sky lit up as if it was day ... then there were more bangs,” Osman Polat, the mayor of a village near the scene of the disaster, told Anatolian.

Rescue workers found seven bodies, but their search was hampered by heavy rain and the inaccessibility of the mountain area, five kilometres from the nearest road. Mr Polat said the twinengined airliner cut a swathe through pine trees before slamming into the mountainside near the coastal town of Seferihisar, 40km south-west of the port city of Izmir and 350 km south of Istanbul.