One Crash Survivor, Woman Found in Plane's Tail, Dies on Way to Hospital
By Davor Huic
(VELJI DOL, Croatia, April 4—Reuters) Rough terrain and heavy rains hindered rescue teams trying to reach the site where a plane carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown crashed in rugged mountains above the Croatian seaside town of Dubrovnik. Eyewitnesses in this village that overlooks Dubrovnik airport said on Thursday they had seen rescue workers lift a body on a stretcher into an ambulance. Croatian authorities had said earlier that they believed a woman had survived the crash but a doctor said she had died by the time she had been brought to the ambulance.Charred Bodies Seen
Dr Mladen Miovic told Reuterss that the woman appeared to have been the only person to have been alive at the crash site. "The woman died by the time she was brought to the ambulance although she had been alive when the rescuers picked her up," Miovic said. An eyewitness who identified himself only as Branko told Reuterss: "We got the woman out of the plane's tail. It was the only part of the plane that remained—all the rest was blown to pieces." He said the woman had been showing signs of life when rescued."I saw three bodies. Some of them were charred." Croatian officials said earlier that four bodies—three men and a woman—had been recovered by late evening. U.S. government officially presumes officials and Croatian authorities had no word by early Thursday on the fate of Brown. State Department spokesman Glyn Davies said Washington's formal position was that Brown was presumed dead.
Some 30 passengers, some of them U.S. business executives, were on board the plane carrying Brown when it crashed shortly before it was due to land at Dubrovnik airport. They were travelling to Dubrovnik from Tuzla in northeast Bosnia where Brown and a U.S. corporate delegation had been checking out postwar reconstruction opportunities. Reuters journalists saw 10 Croatian police vans, three fire engines and two hearses waiting for bodies of victims to be brought downhill from the scene of the crash.
Crash Area Difficult Terrain
There are no roads leading to the site of the crash and rescuers had to trudge uphill for one hour from the closest accessible village—Velji Dol, which is 20 km (12 miles) south of the historic Adriatic city of Dubrovnik. Vans and cars jostled along the hairpin bends of the narrow track to Velji Dol. Rescue workers at the crash site said they waited four hours before helicopters, buzzing just overhead but invisible behind the low cloud cover, managed to land. A source close to the Croatian Army, whose elite units had managed to reach the crash site, said dozens of bodies had been found, lying close to one another by the rubble of the plane. That report could not be immediately verified.Croatian police and fireman began to leave the crash site in the early hours of the morning. "It's over for today. It is very difficult to recover the bodies in this weather," one policeman said. Some two dozen policeman remained to guard the fog-shrouded site overnight.
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