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Seventy-five people, including several foreigners, were burnt to death late Wednesday when a Turkish Airlines plane crashed on landing in heavy fog and burst into flames at Diyarbakir airport, in southeastern Turkey, officials said.
Five people survived the crash, local governor Cemil Serhadli told NTV television.
"The plane crashed on landing with a huge noise and caught fire before breaking up," Aliye Il, one of the survivors, told Anatolia news agency.
She said she was thrown clear of the plane and landed on a bale of hay near the runway.
"The plane was engulfed in flames, it was horrible," she said.
Il said she saw two other survivors, both men. "The soldiers arrived and took us to a hospital," she added.
The RG-100 four-engine plane, built by British Aerospace, had flown in from Istanbul, in the west of the country, according to the airline company.
Flight TK 634 crashed in the military part of the airport, just as it was coming in to land.
Yildirim confirmed the death toll and said those hurt were in a serious condition.
An 18-month-old baby survived the crash but later died, CNN-Turk said.
The airline company said that up to eight foreigners might have been among those killed. It did not give their nationality.
Turkish television stations broke into regular programming to broadcast directly from Diyarbakir airport, showing distraught relatives crying and hugging one another.
A journalist at NTV television read out the list of names of passengers aboard the plane.
The plane had taken off from Istanbul at 6:35 pm (1535 GMT) and crashed at the end of the runway at around 8.The cause of the crash was not immediately known, but witnesses said there was heavy fog at the time.
Ambulances and rescue crews rushed to the scene and the army cordoned off the area. A local university sports hall was turned into a temporary morgue.
Diyarbakir is home to one of the largest Turkish military airfields.
The town of half a million inhabitants is located in the southeast of the country, directly north of Syria and northwest of Iraq.
Turkish President Ahmed Necdet Sezer and Prime Minister Abdullah Gul conveyed his condoleances to relatives of those killed and injured.
Gul said he would fly to Diyarbakir on Thursday.
(China Daily January 9, 2003)
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