Manila - Arab Today
Fourteen people were killed and 20 injured when a light cargo aircraft crashed at a residential area in Manila''s suburban Paranaque on Saturday afternoon, officials said.
Six hundred people were also displaced and a hundred houses and one school were burned. Most of those who were killed were children who were playing in an open area on Taiwan Street.
The bodies of a three-year-old and a baby were found under the collapsed wall of F. Serrano Elementary School.
According to Mayor Florencio Bernabe, the school was almost completely destroyed by the fire which followed the crash.
About 100 shanties in a slum behin the school were also destroyed in the fire, Bernabe said, adding that those who were displaced were allowed to stay overnight at a shelter.
The pilot of the ill-fated plane asked for emergency landing, but the plane crashed seconds after his call to the Air Transportation Tower, said Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) Director General Ramon Gutierrez. The ill-fated plane, owned by ATI Company which transports seafood, was scheduled to go to San Jose, Mindoro in southern Luzon, Gutierrez said.
For years, deadly plane crashes have been affecting many high- to medium-end residential areas, and the nearby slum areas that the local government unit of Paranaque has allowed to sprout near the airport.
Source: BNA