Peru tourist plane crash kills all 13 on board, police say

Thirteen people were killed when a small tourist plane crashed after taking off from Pisco airport in southern Peru for a flight to view the Nazca Lines, police said Saturday.

Police Major Jorge Andrade said the dead were 11 passengers and two crew members and that no one survived. He said four bodies had been recovered. The victims were not immediately identified, and Andrade gave no immediate indication of the cause.

Peru's foreign trade ministry said the 11 passengers were foreign tourists and said it would assist the embassies involved. RPP radio reported that seven Italians, two Germans and two Spaniards were killed.

The crash happened shortly after 1:00 pm local time (1800 GMT) after the aircraft took off from Pisco, about 240 kilometers south of Lima. Peru's civil aviation authority will investigate, and agents were collecting evidence at the site.

Municipal officials in Vista Alegre, where the aircraft came down, said preliminary information indicated an "in-flight emergency" but gave no further details. A Vista Alegre resident said the plane exploded on impact.

The aircraft was operated by AeroDiana, which offers 30-minute to one-hour sightseeing flights over the Nazca Lines. The geoglyphs, etched into desert sands and dating from between 500 BC and 500 AD, were declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1994.

Small planes regularly fly mostly foreign tourists from Pisco to view the lines from the air. Fatal accidents on Nazca Lines tourist flights have happened before, including a 2022 crash that killed seven people and a 2010 crash that killed six.