A Peruvian woman believed killed when a plane plowed into a jungle swamp has been found in a hospital, reducing the number of victims to 39 and bringing that of survivors to 59, the airline said on Friday. A 28-year-old woman, whose name was not released, was found by her husband in a hospital in Pucallpa, near where the Boeing 737-200 crashed in a freak hailstorm as it came in to land, said a spokesman for state-owned airline TANS who declined to give his name. The woman has been transferred to Lima, where she was in serious condition and on a ventilator. Her son, who was traveling with her, was reported to have undergone surgery in the capital.
The crash killed 32 Peruvians, three Americans, one man and two women; a Spanish woman: a Colombian woman; an Australian woman and an Italian man, said Jorge Belevan, a second TANS spokesman. Only six of the dead, all Peruvians, have not been identified, said Belevan. Their bodies are in the morgue of the steamy northern jungle town of Pucallpa. The plane was reduced to chunks of charred rubble and body parts were strewn about, yet more than half the 98 passengers and crew miraculously survived. Survivors, including a 9-year-old girl who rescued her baby cousin and a man who watched his skin shrivel as a fireball swept the plane, told stories of heroism and horror, including how a baby was plucked from the mud. |