Philippine military plane crashes with 92 people on board

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A Philippine Air Force plane with 92 soldiers and crew on board crashed on the southern island of Jolo on Sunday, officials said. At least 17 people were killed, and the death toll was feared to rise.

The commander of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, General Cirilito Sobijana, said the plane missed a runway while trying to land. He said the plane crashed near a village called Pangkal in the town of Patikul, a stronghold of the militant group known as Abu Sayyaf. He said 40 people had been rescued.

“We are doing our best to rescue the passengers, and our commanders on the ground are already there,” General Sobejana said. They are doing their best to put out the flames. So far we have 40 people rescued and treated.”

Lieutenant General Corlito Vinluan, the commander in chief in the region, said 17 bodies had been found.

Officials said the C-130 Hercules was carrying at least 84 soldiers, three pilots and five crew members, as well as five military vehicles. The C-130, a US-made turboprop, is used by militaries around the world and is sometimes kept in service for decades.

The plane that crashed on Sunday first crashed in 1988, and was used by the US Air Force until its sale to the Philippines in January, according to the Philippine Air Force and a website that tracks the C-130 worldwide.

The Philippine Army is trying to modernize its aging fleet. Earlier this month, a newly purchased Black Hawk helicopter crashed during an overnight training flight, killing all six people on board.

This crash occurred about two months after another helicopter, an MG-520 attack helicopter, crashed in the central Philippines, killing its pilot. And in January, a Vietnam War-era UH-1H helicopter also crashed in the south, killing seven soldiers.

In 2008, a Philippine Air Force C-130 crashed into the sea shortly after taking off from Davao City on the southern island of Mindanao, killing nine crew members and two passengers on board.

Soldiers aboard the plane that crashed on Sunday have been flown to Jolo to bolster the army’s operations against the Abu Sayyaf, a small Islamist group deemed a terrorist organization by the Philippine government.

A faction of the Abu Sayyaf, who pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, was blamed for the January 2019 bombing of a cathedral in Jolo, which was carried out by an Indonesian couple and killed at least 23 people. Philippine authorities believe that a similar attack near the cathedral in 2020, which left 14 people dead, was carried out by the Abu Sayyaf faction itself. Since then its leader, Hatib Hajjan Sawadjan, is believed to have been killed, and the army has intensified its operations against the group in hopes of eliminating it.

Austin Ramsey contributed reporting from Hong Kong.

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