65 Killed When Plane Crashes Into Salvador Volcano

All 65 people aboard a Guatemalan airliner, including six Americans and the Brazilian and Danish ambassadors to Nicaragua, were killed in El Salvador when their plane crashed into a volcano, authorities said Thursday.

The Boeing 737, bound from Miami to San Jose, Costa Rica, with stops in several Central American capitals, went down in heavy rain Wednesday night in what authorities said was the worst air disaster in recent Central American history.

“We attribute the accident to a heavy storm in El Salvador,” Frederick Melville, president of Aviateca, which operated the plane, told reporters in Guatemala City, where the plane made a scheduled stop just before the crash.

The control tower at San Salvador airport lost contact with the plane just before 8 p.m. local time, the airline reported. Witnesses said they saw a light--possibly a lightning bolt--and then the plane erupted in flames and fell.

Heavy rains and fog surrounding Chichontepec volcano--which is 42 miles northeast of San Salvador, the capital--delayed the efforts of 500 rescue workers, police and soldiers to recover bodies.

Seven crew members and 58 passengers, including people from Guatemala, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Costa Rica, Mexico, Brazil, Switzerland, Germany, Argentina and Spain, were on board.

The six Americans killed were not immediately identified.

Among the dead were Palle Marker, 47, Danish ambassador to Nicaragua; Genaro Antonio Mucciolo, 60, Brazil’s ambassador to Nicaragua, and his wife, Magdalena.

Also killed were Luis Procuna, 71, a renowned former Mexican bullfighter, and his wife, Consuelo Chamorro, the Associated Press reported. Five brothers who made up the Mariachi Oro Juvenil, a leading Mexican band, also died.

Diego Aleman of The Times’ San Salvador Bureau contributed to this report.