Wreckage probed for clues to crash

VENEZUELAN investigators yesterday picked through the wreckage of a plane that crashed with 160 people on board, trying to determine what caused the engines to fail and sent the jet plunging from the sky in the country’s deadliest air disaster in history.

The pilot radioed authorities saying both engines had failed and requested permission for an emergency landing yesterday shortly before the West Caribbean Airways plane plummeted to the ground, killing all aboard.

Seats, pillows, and smouldering wreckage were strewn across a pasture dotted with trees among cattle ranches near the border with Colombia.