Three small airplanes reportedly crashed on Tuesday in separate incidents in the central Colombian department of Antioquia. One of the aircrafts was found to be transporting cocaine.
Terra reports that an aircraft carrying drugs crashed into the Cauca River with two or three passengers on board, and that navy divers arrived at the scene after the crash to search for the bodies. The authorities reportedly were not able to find any bodies, but did recover 150 kilos of cocaine from the scene, and believe that more was on board.
“There were possibly two or three occupants in the aircraft, and we assume that there were more drugs,” General Orlando Paez, the director of civic security said, adding that the aircraft is thought to have taken off from a clandestine airstrip in Antioquia, but that its planned destination is not known.
Meanwhile in a separate incident, a U.S.-registered Cessna aircraft that was flying between the cities of Monteria and Medellin crashed late Tuesday afternoon.
Medellin newspaper El Colombiano says that the pilot reported an electrical failure at 3:35 PM, before losing contact. The authorities do not know how many people were on board or the location of the aircraft.
Later in the afternoon, flight controllers lost contact at 5:10 PM with another small Cessna aircraft in route to the city of Quibdo, where it was to pick up passengers for a chartered flight.
Witnesses report that the plane crash landed into the Cauca river – at a different location to that of the drug trafficking plane – and survivors crawled out of the cabin and onto the wings, where fishermen tried to save them, but they were “taken away by the river.”
The reports state that government rescue workers began a search mission for both of the planes in the south-eastern and northern parts of the department shortly after the crashes.