98 die in Indonesian air crash

The C-130 Hercules aircraft plowed into several houses on the ground, scattering debris and sending flames and smoke into the air, in the latest of a series of air disasters in a country with a poor air safety record. Air force spokesman Bambang Soelistyo said that 98 people had been killed, including two on the ground, while there were 15 survivors. Survivors said they heard at least two loud explosions and felt the C-130 Hercules wobbling from left to right as it careened to the ground. The transporter slammed into a row of houses and then skidded into a rice paddy, its fuselage completely shattered. Indonesia has been hit by a string of airline crashes, both commercial and military, putting it under international pressure to improve maintenance and safety regulations. But the air force fleet, long underfunded and handicapped by a recently lifted US ban on weapons sales, has been especially hard hit. Just last week another military transporter lost its landing gear and slammed into a house, injuring four people, and 24 were killed when a Fokker 27 crashed into an airport hangar last month during a training mission. The air force has operated C-130s ? the backbone of its transport wing ? since the early 1960s, when it received a batch of 10 from the United States in exchange for the release of a CIA bomber pilot shot down in 1958 while supporting an anti-government mutiny. About 40 more were delivered over the next 20 years, many secondhand and provided by Washington before the Clinton administration imposed sanctions on military deliveries. The air force complained that many of the planes quickly became unserviceable because of the lack of spare parts. There also have been a series of commercial airline crashes in recent years, which killed more than 120 people; Kazinform cites Arab News. See www.arabnews.com for full version.