Airliner crashes in Turkish mountains
YESILYURT, Turkey — An Atlasjet plane crashed on a rocky mountain shortly before it was due to land in southwest Turkey early today, killing all 56 people on board. The cause was not immediately known.
Pieces of wreckage and personal belongings, including suitcases, clothing and magazines, were strewn across the hillside. Rescue workers in bright yellow jackets entered the plane's fuselage, which lay amid boulders and pine trees.
"The seats were detached and all over the place. Some of the seat belts were still around the bodies," said medic Mustafa Dagci, one of the first people to reach the site. "Some bodies were intact, others were in pieces."
Dagci said he and other rescue workers had rushed to the scene, but quickly lost hope of finding survivors when they saw the extent of the devastation.
The MD-83, carrying 49 passengers and seven crew members, took off from Istanbul around 1 a.m. local time headed to Isparta on a flight of about one hour, but went off the radar just before landing at the airport.
At about 7 a.m., a rescue helicopter reached the plane's wreckage near the village of Yesilyurt, in Isparta province, and reported that no one had survived the crash, said Tuncay Doganer, the airline's chief executive.
Doganer said the cause of the crash is unknown, but ruled out technical failure. Weather and visibility were good, he said."The pilot saw the airport and informed the tower that it was inbound. The plane then disappeared," he said.Investigators found the flight data and cockpit voice recorders, which will help them determine the cause of the crash, the civil aviation authority said.Weeping relatives approached the crash site, but were turned away by soldiers and other officials who sought to comfort them. Many bodies were dismembered and not identifiable, firefighter Osman Emir said.Ali Ceylan said his daughter-in-law, 22-year-old Melike Ceylan, his 6-week-old grandson Caner, and his son's mother-in-law perished in the crash. Caner was born in Istanbul and the family was returning to their home in Isparta.A team of investigators, including two pilots, three engineers and an air traffic control expert, went to the area, Anatolia reported. Forensic experts were also sent to investigate.In a statement, Atlasjet said the wreckage of the plane was found on a mountain around 5,000 feet high, and that rescuers initially had difficulty reaching the site because of the rugged terrain.The area where the plane crashed is called Turbe Tepe, which means "Shrine Peak" in Turkish. Much of the wreckage lay amid snow patches 650 feet from the top of the mountain.The plane was spotted five hours after it went missing. Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said it crashed 7 miles from the Isparta airport.Turkish media released a list of passengers. All names were Turkish. The dead included a group of academics who planned to take part in a physics conference. Among them was Engin Arik, a prominent female nuclear physics professor from Istanbul's Bosporus University.Semsettin Uzun, the governor of Isparta, said the crash site was not on the plane's regular flight route.The plane had broken into pieces, with its fuselage and rear landing in different locations. Anatolia said the plane's wings and engine were at the top of a hill.
