A twin-engine commercial airplane crashed Wednesday night in southern Argentina's Patagonia region, killing all 22 people on board. All the victims were Argentine nationals, according to dpa. "A disaster," Dr Ismael Ali, director of the hospital in Los Menucos, said on Argentine television after returning from the crash site in Rio Negro province. "We found only burning wreckage." There were no survivors in the remains of the plane, which were spread over a 100-metre-wide area near Prahuaniyeu, about 1,500 kilometres south-west of the capital Buenos Aires. The victims were severely burned, he said. The pilots of the Saab 340 twin-propeller plane belonging to the regional airline Sol made several distress calls shortly before the aircraft went down, news reports said. Air traffic control authorities indicated that icing may have been the cause of the crash. Local television, citing aviation sources, said one of the pilots had radioed, "we have an icing problem and are going into a descent." Residents in the area said they saw a glow in the night sky and then heard several explosions. The plane with 19 passengers, two pilots and a flight attendant on board had been flying from Neuquen to Comodoro Rivadavia on the Atlantic coast.
