Officials reported Monday that the final five victims of a cargo plane crash in the Philippines had been discovered, bringing the total death toll to 50 in the military's worst flying catastrophe.
Military officials said the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, carrying 96 primarily combat personnel, overshot the runway while landing at the Jolo airport in the Sulu region on Sunday. It slammed into a coconut grove outside the airport and caught fire in a midday calamity witnessed by soldiers and civilians.
49 military members were saved by troops, police, and firefighters, including a handful who leaped off the plane before it exploded and caught fire. According to the military, seven people on the ground were hit by airplane components and debris, three of whom died.
The Lockheed C-130 Hercules was one of two repaired US Air Force planes handed over to the Philippines, Washington's oldest treaty partner in Asia, this year as part of military support.
The plane had already transported two-star Gen. Romeo Brawner Jr., his wife, and three children from Manila to Cagayan de Oro, in the southern Philippines, where he will take over as the new military regional commander on Monday.
Army personnel, many of them were recently trained recruits, boarded the C-130 in Cagayan de Oro for the flight to Sulu, where they would be deployed in the fight against Abu Sayyaf militants in the south.
Brawner was taken aback when he learned that the jet he had just been in had crashed. “We're grateful that we were spared, but it's heartbreaking that so many people died,” Brawner added.
According to a video obtained by troops, the plane landed in clear weather and then vanished beyond the airport. One soldier yells, "It vanished, it vanished!" As the troops screamed, "It fell, it fell," and cursed in terror, dark gray smoke billowed from the crash site in a wooded region.
Maj. Gen. William Gonzales, the military commander of Sulu, said, "They were supposed to join us in our fight against terrorism." For decades, government forces have fought Abu Sayyaf militants in the mostly Muslim region of Sulu.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known, and investigators were searching for the C-130's black boxes, which included the cockpit voice and flight data recorders.
Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan, the regional military commander, said it was improbable that the plane was shot down. “The plane missed the runway and was trying to regain power but failed and crashed,” military chief of staff Gen. Cirilito Sobejana told reporters on Sunday.
According to an air force official, the Jolo runway is shorter than most others in the country, making it more difficult for pilots to modify if an aircraft misses the landing site. Because of a lack of authority to talk publicly, the official, who has flown military planes to and from Jolo multiple times, spoke on the condition of anonymity.
After threatening to eliminate Abu Sayyaf, President Rodrigo Duterte increased the military presence in Sulu to a full division in late 2018, deploying hundreds of extra troops, air force planes, and other war equipment. The United States and the Philippines have designated the small but brutal group as a terrorist organization for kidnappings for ransom, bombings, and beheadings.
According to military historian Jose Custodio, the Philippine air force's greatest catastrophe before Sunday was a crash in a rice field north of Manila in 1971 that killed 40 military personnel.
All six air force soldiers on board were killed after a recently delivered S-701 Blackhawk helicopter crashed in Clark Freeport, a former US airbase, more than a week ago.
As it coped with decades of Muslim and communist insurgencies and territorial rifts with China and other claimant countries in the South China Sea, the Philippine government has battled for years to modernize its military, which is one of Asia's least equipped.
