Sixteen people were killed when a Venezuelan military plane crashed in a mountainous region near Caracas on Friday, a top government official said. Among the victims were high-ranking military officers, disaster agency director Antonio Rivero told the state-run Venpres news agency. The cause of the crash wasn't immediately clear. Rivero said the plane crashed close to the town of El Junquito, located roughly 25 kilometers (15 miles) east of Caracas. Rivero said the death toll could rise because it was not immediately clear how many passengers were on the plane. It also wasn't clear how many of the passengers were military personnel and how many were civilians. It was partly cloudy in the Caracas area at the time of the crash. -
