British tourists die when Cuban plane crashes into dam

Cuban rescue teams were today pulling the bodies of 16 people - including four British tourists - from a dam in central Cuba after a small Soviet-made biplane crashed in a remote region.

The plane, a single-engine Antonov AN-2, went down around 2130 GMT yesterday in the small community of Baez just south of Santa Clara, the capital of Villa Clara province .

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

Farmer Ramon Sampiero said he was feeding his pigs when he saw the plane start to descend.

‘‘I saw it fly very low, but did not hear it crash,’’ Sampiero said.

Witnesses who rushed to the dam to investigate said they could see the plane’s tail jutting out of the water.

One said they saw one of the plane’s wings break off, before it spiralled downwards and crashed into the dam’s shallow waters.

‘‘It looked like it was doing manoeuvres in the sky Then I saw the wing come off and the plane fell. Then we heard a boom,’’ said Ramona Montera.

‘‘I went over on my bicycle I saw a dead woman and a leg floating in the water,’’ she said.

Police blocked access to the dam this morning.

Associated Press journalists saw seven funeral cars with caskets inside leaving the pond area around dawn.

The AN-2, the world’s largest biplane, was operated by the small local charter company Aerotaxi.

In the past, some AN-2 planes were used by Soviet paratroopers, but most were used as small passenger planes that travelled within the former Soviet Union.

Killed were two Germans, six Canadians including a minor four British citizens and four Cubans, said an official from the International Press Centre, a branch of the Foreign Ministry.

A doctor at Santa Clara’s Arnaldo Milan Castro Hospital, said he was among those who went to the crash site and confirmed that 17 had died. There were no survivors, he said.

Mia Yen, spokeswoman for Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa, said Cuban authorities had told the Canadian Embassy in Havana that the plane was flying from the central city of Cienfuegos to Cayo Coco, an exclusive resort in the keys stretching along the main island’s northern coast.