A Philippine air force plane crashed Wednesday on a farm northwest of Manila, killing the two people on board, while a search was continuing for a private aircraft carrying six people that went missing the previous day in the mountainous north.
The SF-260 plane was on a training flight from Sangley airport in Cavite province south of Manila when it plummeted into a rice field in Bataan province, air force spokesperson Col. Maria Consuelo Castillo said.
Police investigator Edgardo Delos Santos told The Associated Press by telephone from the crash site that the bodies of the two men were pulled from the wreckage and that witnesses saw the plane rapidly descending apparently out of control before crashing in the rice field.
The air force grounded other SF-260s, which are used for training and in counter-insurgency operations, Castillo said. An investigation would be done to determine the cause of the crash, the air force said.
The Philippine military, one of the most underfunded in Asia, has struggled for years to modernize its air force and navy in particular despite funding problems while battling decades-old Muslim and communist insurgencies and defending Philippine territorial waters and claims in the disputed South China Sea
source: apnews
