Military plane crash kills 16 in Mississippi

By HAMDALAT OPEYEMI with Agency report

Tragedy struck in the United States of America on Monday when a US military plane crashed into a field in rural Mississippi killing about 16 people aboard and spreading debris for miles, officials said.

Director Frank Leflore County Emergency Management Agency, told reporters at a late briefing that 16 bodies was recovered after the KC-130 spiralled into the ground about 85 miles (135 kilometres) north of Jackson in the Mississippi Delta

Sarah Burns Marine Corps spokeswoman Capt. said in a statement that a KC-130 “experienced a mishap” Monday evening but provided no details. The KC-130 is used as a refuelling tanker, his family’s catfish farm just before 4.00pm when he heard a boom and looked up to see the plane corkscrewing downward with one engine smoking.

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“You looked up and you saw the plane twirling around,” he said. “It was spinning down.”

The plane hit the ground behind some trees in a soybean field, and by the time he and other reached the crash site, fire was burning too intensely to approach the wreckage. The force of the crash nearly flattened the plane, Jones said.

“Beans are about waist-high, and there wasn’t much sticking out above the beans,” he said a man collected his cellphone to report to authorities that there were bodies across US Highway 82, more than a mile from the crash site.

Greenwood Commonwealth was told that debris from the plane was scattered in a radius of about 5 miles (8 kilometers). Firefighters tried to put out the fire at the main crash site but withdrew after an explosion forced them back. The fire produced towering plumes of black smoke visible for miles across the flat region and continued to burn after dusk, more than four hours after the crash.

Aerial pictures taken by WLBT-TV showed the skeleton of the plane burning strongly. It was one of the worst fires you can imagine,” Jones said. He said the fire was punctuated by the pops of small explosions.

Officials did not release information on what caused the crash or where the flight originated.