Forty-eight people were killed Tuesday after a Peruvian 737-200 jet crashed in heavy storm near the Amazon city of Pucallpa and 52 people have survived, the TANS airline company said.

Meanwhile, police said that 41 bodies of the victims have been found.

Earlier, Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo said that at least 70 people had been killed in the crash of the Boeing 737-200 jet in heavy storm near the Amazon city of Pucallpa, with 100 people on board.

"There were between 20 and 30 survivors" on the jet which was on a flight between the capital Lima and Pucallpa, Toledo was quoted by the local media as saying.

"The plane made an emergency landing but without its landing gear," said a firefighter. "The weather was really terrible, there was a fierce storm at the time," said a police officer in Pucallpa. 

The aircraft was less than five kilometers (three miles) from Pucallpa airport when it crashed near a road at 3:06 PM (20:06 GMT), according to a control tower official. The official said a storm had broken out as the plane approached the airport.

Pucallpa is 840 kilometers (521 miles) northeast of Lima.

A Radio Programs of Peru reporter at the scene said he saw several dead bodies, and a survivor said he had seen more than 20 people injured, mostly with burns and fractures.

The RPP reporter said he saw dead children, including babies, around the crash site. He also saw the body of a woman in a flight attendant's uniform.

Hospital official Bertha Garcia said the local hospital had received five bodies and 23 injured.

Company spokesman Jorge Belevan told reporters, "Preliminary information shows that the accident was caused by a cross-wind at the moment of landing. Although the pilots are as skilled as they can be, unfortunately, the plane was lost."

One of the survivors, Tomas Ruiz, told RPP the plane appeared to be affected by the bad weather. "With 10 minutes remaining for us to land in Pucallpa we noticed that the plane was moving too much because of the weather," he said.

Another survivor, William Zea, nursing a burned hand, told RPP, "The plane had problems and we dropped." His wife, who was not identified, also survived.

Toledo said he had ordered all necessary assistance for survivors and rescue workers, and said investigation of the cause of the crash has already started.

"I am following minute by minute the unfolding of this tragic accident which occurred in Pucallpa," a visibly upset Toledo said.

According to the Aviation Safety Network, the crash was the sixth for TANS since 1992. Most recently, 46 people died January 9, 2003, in the crash of a TANS Fokker 28-1000 in northern Peru.

The crash, the fifth this month involving an airliner, came a week after a chartered Colombian jetliner crashed in Venezuela, killing all 160 on board.

TANS, founded in the 1960s by the Peruvian air force to help serve remote jungle communities, started up as a commercial airline in 1998. It has around 30 percent of the local market.

(Xinhua News Agency, Chinadaily.com via agencies August 24, 2005)