A military plane crashed in Colombia on Monday, March 23, 2026, killing 66 people as rescuers shuttled dozens of survivors to nearby hospitals and searched for four who were still missing.
The head of Colombia’s armed forces, Hugo Alejandro Lopez, disclosed that the Lockheed Martin-built Hercules C-130 transport plane was carrying 128 people, including 11 Air Force members, 115 army personnel, and two national police officers.
Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez said on X the accident occurred as the plane was taking off from Puerto Leguizamo, on the border with Peru.
The plane was believed to have suffered an impact near the end of the runway as it was taking off, firefighter Eduardo San Juan Callejas told Caracol, with a wing of the plane later clipping a tree as it was plummeting.
He added that the crash caused the plane to catch fire and detonate some sort of explosive devices on board.
Residents of the remote area were the first to pull out survivors, with videos showing men speeding down a dirt road with wounded soldiers on the back of their motorcycles.
Military vehicles later arrived, though authorities told Reuters the crash site was difficult to reach, impeding rescue efforts.
Lopez said 57 of the survivors had been hospitalised, with 30 of them in non-serious condition at a military clinic.
Lawmaker, 14 others die in Colombia plane crash
Hercules C-130s are frequently used in Colombia to transport troops as part of the military’s operations amid a six-decade-long internal conflict that has claimed more than 450,000 lives.
The tail number of the plane that crashed on Monday matches that of the first of three planes delivered by the United States to Colombia in recent years.
At the end of February, another Hercules C-130 belonging to the Bolivian Air Force crashed in the populous city of El Alto, barely missing a residential block.
More than 20 people died in that incident and another 30 were injured, and banknotes from the plane’s cargo scattered around the crash site, prompting clashes between residents and security forces.
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