A Cuban airliner flying from the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba to the capital crashed after declaring an emergency with 68 people aboard, including 28 foreigners, state media reported.

There was no immediate word on whether any survived.

AeroCaribbean Flight 883 went down near the village ofGuasimal in Santi Spiritus province Thursday, carrying 61 passengers and a crew of seven, state television said. It said 28 passengers were foreigners, but did not give a breakdown of nationalities.

State media said the names of those on board would be released later.

The twice-a-week flight goes from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, toSantiago de Cuba to Havana. It had been due to land in the Cuban capital at 7:50 pm (local time), but reported an emergency at 5:42 pm (local time) and subsequently lost contact with air traffic controllers.

State media said that the plane was an ATR-72 twin turboprop and that the crash site was not far from the Zaza reservoir, the largest in Cuba. It said authorities had mobilised doctors and emergency workers in the rural area, which is about 220 miles east of Havana.

At Havana’s national terminal, relatives of those on board the plane were kept isolated from other passengers and journalists.

“This is very sad,” said Caridad de las Mercedes Gonzalez, who was manning an airport information desk. “We are very worried. This has taken us by surprise.”

State media gave no details on what happened to the airliner, saying only that the cause of the crash was being investigated.

The flight would have been one of the last leaving Santiago de Cuba for Havana ahead of Tropical Storm Tomas, which was on a track to pass between Cuba’s eastern end and the western coast of Haiti Friday.

Cuban media said earlier that flights and train service toSantiago were being suspended until the storm passed.

AeroCaribbean is owned by Cuban state airline Cubana de Aviacion.

The last passenger plane crash on the island occurred in March 2002, when a Soviet-made biplane carrying 16 people, including 12 foreigners, plunged into a small reservoir in central Cuba. The plane was operated by a small local charter company called Aerotaxi.

21 killed in Karachi air crash Karachi

Twenty-one people, including at least one foreign national, were killed when a small aircraft belonging to a private charter service crashed immediately after taking off from the airport in the southern Pakistani port city of Karachi Friday.

The Beechcraft 1900C aircraft of JS Air, which had been chartered to ferry employees of a US oil company, had 19 passengers and two crew members on board, Civil Aviation Authority officials told TV news channels.

The officials said at least one foreigner was on the aircraft but did not give his nationality. Immediately after the twin-engine turboprop aircraft took off from Karachi aircraft at 7.15 am, the pilot informed the control tower that one of the engines had failed.

The pilot was advised to turn back and land. However, the aircraft crashed into open ground at an army central ordinance depot near the airport and burst into flames.

Lt Col Noor Alam, an army officer who participated in the rescue operation, told the media: “No one survived the crash. There were no casualties on the ground as the aircraft crashed into an open field. The situation is under control and the army mounted the best possible rescue operation.” Army personnel cordoned off the area and began pulling bodies out of the debris after dousing the flames.

Ambulances of the private Chippa rescue service took at least 12 bodies to the Jinnah Hospital. Alam said all the bodies were charred beyond recognition and it was impossible to make out whether the dead were Pakistanis or foreigners. “One of our officers fainted on seeing the bodies,” he said.

The nose of the aircraft had to be cut to remove the bodies of the pilot and co-pilot, Alam said. The aircraft was taking a group of workers to the Bhitshah oilfield near Karachi.

JS Air had been chartered by the US oil company to ferry its workers as part of a weekly change of shift at the oilfield. Due to security concerns, the workers are flown directly to the oilfield.

Besides the pilot and co-pilot, 17 passengers including one foreigner, a guard from the Airport Security Force and a technician were on board the aircraft, officials were quoted as saying by TV news channels.