At least 23 people survived when an aircraft carrying 43 passengers and a crew of four crashed Monday in southern Venezuela, dpa cited authorities as saying. The plane, operated by the state airline Conviasa, had taken off from the city of Puerto Ordaz, in the state of Bolivar, and was headed to tourist favourite Margarita Island, said Infrastructure Minister Francisco Garces. The ATR-42 model aircraft crashed soon after take-off into the scrapyard of a nearby plant operated by the steel company Sidor. Bolivar Governor Francisco Rangel said emergency teams acted quickly to rescue 23 "badly injured" people who were taken to two hospitals. No one was injured on the ground as a result of the accident, he said. Rangel said the pilot reported trouble immediately after take-off. "It helped that it crashed in the Sidor plant, because there are several ambulances there," he noted. Civil defence, police and fire department personnel, among others, were working at the site of the accident, around 10 kilometres away from Puerto Ordaz airport.
