LIMA, Peru (AP) — Rescuers battled sucking mud and heavy rain Wednesday to pull 13 injured survivors from the wreckage of an Occidental Petroleum plane that crashed in the Amazon jungle and burst into flames with 87 people aboard.
The survivors — some of whom were seriously hurt — had to be carried three miles on litters because driving rain prevented their evacuation by helicopter. Company officials said the 13th person was found in the muck nearly 18 hours after the plane went down.
Despite mud that swallowed some bodies, authorities held out hope that more survivors could be found among the dense grass and foliage. But they also declared the remaining 74 people missing and feared dead.
Most of the 79 passengers on the plane, including an American and a Venezuelan, were oil workers employed either by Occidental or local contractors. The flight also carried a crew of eight, but there were no crew members among the survivors.
It was the second Peruvian air force plane to crash in northern Peru in just over a month. On March 29, a Russian-made military transport plane carrying 61 people crashed outside Piura, 530 miles northwest of Lima, killing 22 people and injuring 40. The crash was attributed to engine failure.