Jakarta (Indonesia): Thirty people were killed in a military transport plane crash in the Indonesian city of Medan on Tuesday morning. The crash occurred shortly after takeoff.
The rescue team counted 30 bodies among the debris, a report said.
The C-130 Hercules aircraft went down in Medan, Capital of North Sumatra province, said Indonesian military spokesman Maj. Gen. Fuad Basya, reports CNN. From local television broadcast images of the plane's burning wreckage it appeared to be a residential area.
The aircraft, made in the United States in the 1960s, was inspected and cleared to fly before it took off from Suwondo Air Force Base, the military is reported to have claimed.
The plane crashed about 5 km from the Medan air base.
The plane was on a routine logistics mission to Tanjung Pinang, near Singapore.
Buildings in the neighbourhood awere also damaged. Thick plumes of smoke and flames were seen rising from the debris.
There were 12 crew and they consisted of three pilots, one navigator and eight technicians.
Earlier this year, an F-16 fighter jet caught fire during takeoff from an airbase in Jakarta. The pilot escaped. Before that, two air force planes from an Indonesian aerobatics team crashed in a practice session of an air show, in Langkawi. The four pilots ejected. An AirAsia plane crashed in December last
flying from Indonesia's Surabaya to Singapore, killing all 162 people.
In September 2005, a Boeing 737 crashed into a residential area after take-off from Medan's Polonia airport, killing 143 people. Thirty of them were on the ground.
