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19 dead in US Marine plane crash

WASHINGTON:All 19 U.S. Marines on board a new-technology military airplane were killed on Saturday night when it crashed during a training exercise, U.S. military officials said.

An MV 22 Osprey crashed with 19 Marines on board, including four crewmembers, at about 8 p.m. PDT (0300 GMT) near Avra Valley Airport in the desert town of Marana, Arizona, about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Tucson, Arizona, according to Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon.

"We believe all 19 have perished," Bacon told reporters travelling with Defence Secretary William Cohen in Kuwait. "We don't know anything about the cause right now. It's premature to speculate."

Bacon said the Marines were conducting training exercises using night-vision goggles when the crash occurred.

Marana residents told television news crews that the plane burst into a ball of flames before hitting the ground. Television pictures on CNN showed smoke rising from a smouldering mass of metal lit up by beams of light from emergency vehicles.

Military officials could not confirm, however, whether the plane had become an airborne fireball before it crashed.

The Osprey, under development for more than a decade, can take off and land like a helicopter using rotors before converting to fixed-wing operation that enables it to fly like a plane.

Capt. Rob Winchester, a U.S. Marine Corps spokesman at the Pentagon, confirmed early on Sunday that all 19 Marines on board died.

He also said the Marines are conducting final evaluations of the hybrid Osprey while it is engaged in routine operations. It was not known whether the crash occurred while the plane was in transition from rotor-powered to fixed-wing flight, he said.

"Our concern goes out to the members of the families of those Marines on board," said Winchester.

The Osprey is due to be placed on full operational status in 18 to 24 months, Winchester said. It is designed to replace the helicopter as a means of getting U.S. troops into and out of hot spots quickly and in conducting civilian rescue operations.

The White House released a statement in which President Bill Clinton underscored the dangers those in the military face even during peacetime.

"This terrible loss of life is a reminder of how so many men and women in the nation's military put their lives at risk, each and every day, so that we might be a free people, and the cause of peace can be advanced throughout the world."

A second Osprey on the training mission was not involved in the accident, he said.

Both planes were stationed at a Marine Corps air base in Yuma, Arizona, though the servicemen who perished were from around the United States, officials said.

No one on the ground was injured when the plane went down in fair weather. There was no live ordnance on board the plane, a Marine spokesman told Reuters.-Reuters