At least 20 people have died and dozens have been injured after a military cargo plane carrying banknotes crashed while landing near Bolivia’s capital on Friday, damaging about a dozen vehicles on a highway and scattering bills on the ground, an official has said.
Footage from local media showed people rushing to collect banknotes while police in riot gear tried to disperse them using teargas. Authorities were later seen setting the money alight in a bonfire at the scene of the crash.
The defence ministry said in a statement that “the money transported in the crashed aircraft has no official serial number … therefore it has no legal or purchasing power”. It added that “its collection, possession, or use constitutes a crime.”
The aircraft, a C-130 Hercules transport plane, skidded off the runway as it landed at El Alto international airport and veered along an avenue before coming to rest in a field, local media footage showed.
A police offer protects himself from teargas spread to disperse people from getting near the site of the crashed aircraft and its cargo of newly printed money in El Alto, Bolivia. Photograph: Juan Karita/AP
It was not immediately known what caused the crash but witnesses told Agence France-Presse that the weather had been treacherous.
Cristina Choque, a 60-year-old vendor whose car was struck by aircraft wreckage, described lightning and a heavy hailstorm at the time the plane landed. “The tyre is what fell on top of us … my daughter is injured, she has a head wound,” she said.
Choque said she and her family remained inside their mangled vehicle for fear of the heaving crowd at the crash site.
The Ministry of Defence said it would launch an investigation into the crash.
Col Rene Tambo, head of the police homicide division in El Alto, told reporters “there are about 20, maybe a few more,” casualties. Col Pavel Tovar of the National Fire Department gave an earlier toll of “between 15 and 16 people” dead in the disaster. “We are recovering the bodies of these people who have sadly suffered in the accident,” he said.
Bolivia’s health ministry reported that at least 28 people were injured.
A destroyed car is pictured near the site where a military plane crashed in el Alto. Photograph: Aizar Raldes/AFP/Getty Images
The plane, which belongs to the Bolivian air force, was transporting new banknotes from the central bank to other cities and a large number of bills scattered on the ground at the crash site.
The Bolivian Air Navigation and Airports authority (NAABOL) said in a statement that the C-130 departed the eastern city of Santa Cruz and crashed while landing at the international airport in La Paz, which suspended its operations.
Bolivian air force Gen. Sergio Lora said two of the plane’s six crew members had not been found as of late Friday.
With Associated Press and Agence France-Presse