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Venezuela crash inquiry focuses on fuel, engines

MACHIQUES, Venezuela - Investigators lifted scraps of metal and crouched among charred trees Wednesday, searching for victims' remains while trying to piece together what could have caused both engines to fail in Venezuela's deadliest air disaster.

Officials said it could take time to identify the remains of the 160 victims, mostly vacationers headed home to the French Caribbean island of Martinique when the West Caribbean Airways jet crashed.

The plane appeared to have "hit the ground in a nosedive at full force," French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said in Paris. French specialists were sent to Venezuela to join the investigation and help identify victims, and Martinique will appoint two judges to determine legal responsibility.

Venezuelan investigators were focusing on the possibility of contaminated fuel, or some other fuel problem that led both engines to fail simultaneously, said Nelson Serrano, an emergency official in the western state of Zulia where the crash occurred.

Investigators took samples from what remained of the engines, but "the near-total destruction of the plane makes this investigation tough," police investigator Hernan Zurita said.

The focus on the engines and the fuel stems from the pilot's radio call shortly before the crash. He said both engines had failed and requested permission for an emergency landing.

Venezuelan officials said they thought the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 fell into a steep descent minutes later and slammed into the ground east of the Sierra de Perija mountains near Machiques, about 400 miles west of Caracas.

The jet was carrying 152 tourists from Martinique returning home after a week in Panama, officials said. All eight Colombian crew members were also killed.

In Martinique, relatives and friends of the victims prayed at a memorial ceremony. French Minister of Overseas Departments Francois Baroin tried to comfort mourners. Several elderly people collapsed in grief during the ceremony.

ATHENS, Greece - A crew member or passenger may have made a last, desperate attempt to save a Cypriot passenger jet before it slammed into a mountainside north of Athens, killing all 121 people aboard, Greek defense officials said in media reports Wednesday.

However, Greece's government and military officials refused to comment on the reports until the end of an investigation, heightening speculation about what caused the mysterious crash of the Helios Airways flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, to Athens.

From the first, the Greek government has said the cause of the crash was likely technical failure and not terrorism.

But with so many unanswered questions, industry experts said Wednesday it was too soon to tell.

Two Greek air force F-16 jets were scrambled after the Helios flight lost radio contact. They flew by the airliner over the Aegean Sea. The government said the F-16 pilots saw two unidentified people in the cockpit trying to regain control of the plane.

[Last modified August 18, 2005, 01:06:07]