The World - News from Sept. 7, 1989
A Cuban airliner that crashed on takeoff Sunday, killing 170 people, was buffeted by powerful winds from a thunderstorm just before it plunged into a Havana suburb, Cuban news reports said. According to a preliminary report published in Cuba’s official paper, Granma, the chartered Cubana de Aviacion plane took off during “a sudden worsening of weather conditions with strong upward and downward drafts.” It failed to gain altitude and crashed near the end of the runway, destroying or damaging 33 homes. Only one of the 126 people aboard--mostly Italian tourists--survived, and 45 people on the ground were killed, the official Cuban news agency Prensa Latina said.
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