66 Dead, Four Missing After Colombian Military Plane Crash

A Colombian military aircraft crashed during takeoff on Monday, claiming 66 lives.

Rescuers transported dozens of survivors to neighbouring hospitals while continuing to search for four people still unaccounted for, a senior official confirmed.

The Hercules C-130 transport aircraft, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, had 128 people on board at the time of the crash — comprising 11 Air Force personnel, 115 army soldiers, and two national police officers, according to Hugo Alejandro Lopez, the head of the country’s armed forces.

The updated death toll was nearly twice the figure initially reported by authorities, who pressed on with search and recovery operations at the crash site.

Defence Minister Pedro Sanchez confirmed via X that the accident took place during takeoff at Puerto Leguizamo, a town on the Colombian border with Peru.

Firefighter Eduardo San Juan Callejas told Caracol that the aircraft is believed to have struck something near the end of the runway during its takeoff roll, after which one of its wings clipped a tree as it went down.

The crash triggered a fire and detonated explosive devices that were on board, he added.

Locals in the remote area were the first to respond, pulling survivors from the wreckage.

Footage circulating online showed men ferrying wounded soldiers along a dirt road on the backs of motorcycles.

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Military vehicles eventually arrived at the scene, though authorities acknowledged the site’s difficult terrain had hampered rescue efforts.

Lopez confirmed that 57 survivors had been taken to hospital, with 30 of them in stable condition at a military medical facility.

President Gustavo Petro, nearing the close of his administration, used the tragedy as an opportunity to lash out at bureaucratic bottlenecks he says have stalled his efforts to upgrade the military.

“I will grant no further delays; it is the lives of our young people that are at stake,” he wrote on X.

“If civilian or military administrative officials are not up to this challenge, they must be removed.”

Several contenders in Colombia’s presidential election, scheduled for May 31, extended their condolences and called for a full investigation into the crash.

A Lockheed Martin spokesperson stated that the company was committed to supporting Colombia through the investigation process.

The Hercules C-130 was first introduced in the 1950s, with Colombia receiving its earliest models in the late 1960s. In more recent years, the country has updated ageing C-130s with newer variants transferred from the United States under a provision permitting the handover of surplus or used military hardware.

The aircraft type is widely deployed across Colombia for troop movement as part of military operations linked to the country’s six-decade internal conflict, which has cost more than 450,000 lives.

The tail number of the downed aircraft corresponds to that of the first of three planes delivered by the United States to Colombia in recent years.

The crash comes weeks after another Hercules C-130 — this one belonging to Bolivia’s Air Force — went down in late February over the densely populated city of El Alto, narrowly avoiding a residential neighbourhood.

That incident killed more than 20 people and left around 30 others injured. Banknotes from the plane’s cargo scattered across the crash site, sparking confrontations between residents and security forces.