A Colombian charter jet carrying tourists home to Martinique from Panama crashed in Venezuela on Tuesday after its engines failed, killing all 160 onboard in one of the country's worst air disasters, Reuters reported. The West Caribbean Airways MD-82 aircraft was en route to the French Caribbean island when it began to have engine trouble and diverted to an airport in Venezuela. It crashed around 3:15 a.m. (0715 GMT) at a cattle farm near Venezuela's border with Colombia, authorities said. "Unfortunately, there were no survivors from this accident," Col. Francisco Paz, head of Venezuela's National Civil Aviation Institute, told local television. Most of the passengers were local government officials in Martinique who had been on holiday with their families, an official at the Fort-de-France airport in Martinique said. He said the 152 passengers included one baby and four children. The Fort-de-France airport official said the plane had been chartered by the Globe Trotters travel agency in Martinique. In Seattle, Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx said the company was dispatching a team of air safety investigators to help determine the cause of the crash. --more 2228 Local Time 1928 GMT
