ALL 160 passengers and crew aboard a Colombian airliner were killed yesterday after it crashed in wooded mountains in Venezuela, the fourth commercial air crash this month.

The passengers were French citizens returning to the overseas territory of Martinique from holidays in Panama. Most were local government officials who had chartered the flight for a holiday with their families. Passengers included a baby and four children. The eight crew were Colombian.

Magalie Grivallier, a government spokeswoman, said Martinique, which has a population of 432,000, was so small that “virtually everybody had a cousin on that plane”.

The victims included Paul Berisson, 79, and his wife, George, 70, who were travelling with nearly three dozen friends. Giselle Berisson, 45, their daughter, said: “What consoles us is that they were together to the end.”

André Charpentier, the Mayor of Basse-Pointe, a northern town of 4,000 people, said that 16 passengers from the area were among the victims. “There were couples who went away. Today there are children who are orphans,” he said.

Max Bottius, a psychologist sent to help the families, said some of the orphaned children were asking: “ ‘What’s going to happen to us? What do we do?’ These are questions that give you goose bumps.”

Another victim was Angela Patricia Pena Valencia, a flight attendant who was not scheduled to be on board until the last minute.

The pilot of the twin-jet McDonnell Douglas MD82 belonging to West Caribbean Airways had radioed air-traffic controllers that his engines had failed and requested permission for an emergency landing. Radio contact was then lost.

Shortly afterwards people in the area of Machiques, in the northwestern Venezuelan state of Zulia, near the Colombian border, reported a loud explosion. Rains hampered rescue crews from reaching the area.

Alfonso Marquez, the Mayor of the nearby town of Rosario, said: “It’s terrible. There are bodies mutilated, in pieces. There is practically nothing left out there.”

Most of the wreckage was spread across about 100m, suggesting that the aircraft had come in at a sharp angle, he said. One of two flight data recorders have been recovered.

Jesse Chacón, the Interior Minister, told Venezuelan television that the pilot contacted Caracas at 3am local time to ask permission to land at nearby Maracaibo airport because one of his engines had failed.

“Then he got back in touch to say he had lost his second engine. At this stage the plane was losing height at 7,000ft a minute and crashed,” he said.

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