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Twenty injured as many houses and a school destroyed in fire

Manila: Fourteen people were killed and 20 injured when a light cargo aircraft crashed at a residential area in Manila’s suburban Paranaque on Saturday afternoon, officials said.

Six hundred people were also displaced and a hundred houses and one school were burned.

"My husband Roldan [45] died when the plane crashed and burned our two-storey apartment. It happened seconds after he broke the glass window of our apartment and threw me and our four children [ages 7, 10, 12, and 14] out to a safe place," said Maribel Sabidorya who was being treated at the Paranaque Doctors Hospital.

The body of Roldan Sabidorya, 50, was found outside the family’s wrecked apartment on Taiwan Street near the Better Living subdivision at 4.30pm, said Paranaque’s Chief Inspector Enrique Sy.

One body found near Sabidorya’s apartment still had a seat belt on. Although burned beyond recognition, he was identified as one of the two pilots of the ill-fated Beechcraft plane which crashed, Sy said.

Most of those who were killed were children who were playing in an open area on Taiwan Street. The bodies of a three-year-old and a baby were found under the collapsed wall of F. Serrano Elementary School. According to Mayor Florencio Bernabe, the school was almost completely destroyed by the fire which followed the crash.

All the injured were taken to Paranaque Doctors Hospital and Paranaque Medical Centre, Bernabe said, adding that his local government unit agreed to pay the hospital bills of the injured.

About 100 shanties in a slum behin the school were also destroyed in the fire, Bernabe said, adding that those who were displaced were allowed to stay overnight at a shelter.

Assistance

They were fed with the help of the social welfare department.

At five in the evening, policemen had not yet retrieved the bodies that were burned beyond recognition.

Policemen gave way to investigators who took pictures of the dead and the wrecked engine that fell in the residential area, a radio report said.

The pilot of the ill-fated plane asked for emergency landing, but the plan crashed seconds after his call to the Air Transportation Tower, said Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines (CAAP) Director General Ramon Gutierrez.

The ill-fated plane, owned by ATI Company which transports seafood, was scheduled to go to San Jose, Mindoro in southern Luzon, Gutierrez said.

Investigation of the crash has started, said Transportation Secretary Mar Roxas. He said the government’s long-term plan is to clear all residential areas near Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA).

For years, deadly plane crashes have been affecting many high- to medium-end residential areas, and the nearby slum areas that the local government unit of Paranaque has allowed to sprout near the airport.