At least 7 killed in Amsterdam crash landing
At least seven people have been confirmed dead and at least 20 injured after a Turkish Airlines passenger plane with 134 people on board crashed while trying to land at Amsterdam＇s Schiphol airport.
The plane reportedly broke into three parts. (Reuters: Paul Vreeker)
There have been conflicting reports about the death toll, with the airline＇s CEO Temel Kotil earlier saying nobody on board the flight had died.
But the Turkish Transport Ministry has confirmed that seven people have been killed.
At a press conference, the airport director said as many as nine people may have been killed and at least 50 injured.
Turkish Airlines chairman Candan Karlitekin told a news conference in Istanbul there were 127 passengers, including a baby, on board and seven crew.
Dutch television showed what appeared to be covered bodies on the ground near the crashed single-aisle Boeing 737 jetliner. Eyewitnesses and officials on television also said there were bodies on the ground.
Images showed the crumpled plane in three parts, with the tail section of the fuselage broken off, and a wide crack in the fuselage just behind the cockpit. The airliner had not caught fire.
"We are in the middle of a field now, approximately 5-6 kilometres from the airport," Survivor Mustafa Bahcecioglu told Turkish broadcaster Channel 24.
"The majority of the passengers are injured but there are people who are not injured. Around 30 ambulances have come," he said.
Airport officials said the crashed aircraft was a Boeing 737-800, flight TK 1951 from Istanbul.
The plane, on a flight from Istanbul, broke up when it hit the ground several hundred metres north of a runway at Schiphol, which is 20km south-west of Amsterdam＇s centre.
At Schiphol airport, 10 flights were delayed and 10 were cancelled, but otherwise operations were as usual.
Survivor Huseyin Sumer told CNN Turk by telephone "The plane split into three parts. We are calling people to say the situation is not very serious but there might be casualties on the front side of the plane."
The crash appeared to be the worst since an El Al cargo plane crashed into high-rise apartment blocks in a south-eastern suburb of Amsterdam in October 1992, killing 43 people, 39 of them on the ground.
The 1992 cargo plane was a Boeing 747. It ploughed into the buildings, setting them on fire, shortly after take-off after two engines had broken off.
- ABC/Reuters
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