A four-seater cargo plane crashed onto a crowded Philippine slum on Saturday, sparking a fire that killed 13 people and left five missing and at least another 20 injured, officials said. The crash and the resulting blaze killed both the pilot, co-pilot, and their lone passenger while the other fatalities are thought to be residents of the shanty town, said chief inspector Wilson Tana, a fire investigator.
“The fire department got here quickly, but we had trouble because the passageways are so narrow,” he told AFP.
“There might be more bodies,” he added as firefighters cleared away blackened sheets of corrugated iron in search of bodies that might have been pinned underneath. At least five other residents of the burnt shanties are missing, Tana said. However, investigators had not brought search lights and the search effectively stopped as night fell among the twisted wreckage of burnt slum homes, an AFP reporter saw.
