Peru Jet Crash Kills American, 10 Others

A Peruvian passenger jet crashed Tuesday shortly after takeoff high in the Andes, killing 11 people, including an American, officials said.

Peruvian Transport Minister Camilo Carrillo Gomez put the death toll at 11. Earlier, a local doctor and a municipal official gave fatality figures ranging from 15 to 22, with about 50 people injured, some seriously.

Aeroperu spokesman Freddy Chirinos, in a statement read on local radio, said the dead included one Swiss national, two French nationals and an American whom he identified as Douglas Harris. No details were immediately available.

“A terrible misfortune has occurred, a tragedy that has ended with human loss, but it could have been much worse,” Carrillo told a leading Peruvian radio program soon after arriving in Juliaca. “Eleven people have died, and around 52 people, including the pilot, survived.”

Aeroperu Flight 451 crashed about a mile from Juliaca’s Manco Capac airport, about 12 miles from Lake Titicaca, the highest lake in the world and a major tourist attraction.

An Aeroperu spokeswoman, Amalia Silva, said that the F-28 Fokker split into two after crashing just minutes after taking off from Juliaca in Puno province, about 500 miles southeast of Lima. It was bound for Arequipa, Peru’s second-largest city, and carried 65 passengers and four crew members.

Chirinos said a turbine apparently failed moments after takeoff.

Local hospital staff members identified some of the wounded foreigners as Katherine Krauss and Mark Braven from the United States and Rafael and Johana Gianinazzi of Switzerland.

There were reports that two American diplomats were among the passengers, but the U.S. Embassy in Lima could not confirm these reports.

Peru had two major air disasters last year and then a series of near-misses.

In December, 1987, a Navy Fokker F-27 crashed into the sea off Lima, killing 43 people.

Six months earlier, 46 people died when a Peruvian air force Antonov crashed in the jungle near the town of Saposa.