East Timor Crash May Have Been Weather-Related

A Russian-made Ilyushin IL-76TD, configured for cargo, crashed in a mountainous region of East Timor Friday, killing five crew members. Rescue teams were searching for a sixth member of the crew in the mountains about three miles from the field at Bacau. A United Nations spokesman, however, said officials believed the sixth crewman had also died in the crash.

All crewmembers were Russian citizens. There were no reports of casualties on the ground.

Missed The Runway

UN Spokeswoman Marcia Pool told Australian reporters in Jakarta the crew was trying to land the IL-76 in dense fog. She said they missed the runway and crashed in a village. No houses were hit. However, there was a massive fire at the crash site, which hampered recovery efforts.

The downed jetliner belonged to Euro Asia Aviation. It departed Macau earlier in the day, carrying telephone equipment for a Portugese company charged with building the new country's first-ever telephone system.

The world's newest country, established last May, East Timor has no crash investigation team. United Nations experts are being flown in to try and determine why the IL-76 missed the runway.

“There was a lot of fog,” said UN spokesman Wilton Fonseca from his office in Dili, the capitol of East Timor. “There was bad weather.”

FMI: www.un.org