Climbers in Chile's Andes say
they have found the wreckage of a missing plane that disappeared more
than half a century ago with a team of soccer stars on board (AFP
Photo/Pablo Porciuncula)
Images of the twisted
wreck of the LAN Chile Douglas DC-3 that went down April 3, 1961 were
shown on Chilean television Sunday, released by the climbers who said
the find was in Maule, about 300 kilometers (190 miles) south of
Santiago.
"The plane is more
than 3,200 meters (10,000 feet) up the mountain. Quite a bit of the
fuselage is still there, a lot of things scattered over the area
including human bones. So this story is getting a rewrite since this is
not where original accounts said," one of the mountaineers, Leonardo
Albornoz, explained.
The plane was carrying 34 people when it crashed, with all presumed dead.They included eight members of the Green Cross football squad, team coach Arnaldo Vasquez, and other team staff and friends who were coming back to Santiago from a match in Osorno.
The plane has been missing ever since, but the story until now had been that a LAN pilot had spotted something he said was the footballers' plane in another location -- near the city of Linares.
The
mountaineers declined to give the exact location to Chilean media,
saying they feared the crash site could be desecrated, even though it is
remote.
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