200 feared dead in fiery landing accident (Roundup)

By Emilio Rappold Jul 18, 2007, 2:19 GMT

A commercial plane of Brazilian TAM airlines crashed against a fuel storage site during its landing on the Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo, Brazil, on 17 July 2007. The plane, with 170 passengers aboard, took off in Porto Alegre city, south of Brazil, and skidded on the wet floor of the Sao Paulo\'s airport and crashed into a storage of cargo and fuel of its own company. EPA/ERNESTO RODRIGUEZ

Sao Paulo - About 200 people including victims on the ground are presumed dead in the crash of a Brazilian airliner that skidded into a petrol station on landing Tuesday, a Sao Paulo fire chief said.

The airliner with 176 people on board crashed on landing at Congonhas airport in Sao Paulo, setting off a huge blaze.

The TAM airline Airbus A320 skidded off the runway, across a busy highway and rammed the petrol station and another building around 6:50 pm (2150 GMT).

The flames quickly spread to other nearby buildings, and parts of at least one building collapsed amid multiple explosions, Brazilian broadcaster Globonews reported. Dozens of ambulances and 400 firefighters were on the scene.

The plane was arriving from the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, and the runway was reportedly wet amid heavy rain.

'There are probably around 200 people dead,' fire chief Manuel Antonio da Silva Araujo told Brazilian news website UOL.

Douglas Ferrari, an emergency doctor at the scene, told Globonews that at least 20 charred bodies had been recovered at the scene.

The fire was largely under control after about four hours.

The bodies of several passengers killed in the accident had been recovered and numerous other casualties had been taken to hospitals, local television reported.

TAM said that the aircraft carried 155 passengers, 15 TAM employees travelling on the flight and a flight crew of six.

Destroyed in the blaze were a building housing TAM's freight service, another commercial building and some houses.

Congonhas, the second-largest airport serving the Brazilian financial centre Sao Paulo, was shut down following the accident. Residents of the Sao Paul neighbourhood of Moema, adjoining the airport, reported panic during the explosions set off by the crash.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called an emergency meeting of his cabinet in Brasilia shortly after the accident.

One day earlier, another plane slid off the runway at the same airport and came to rest to in a grassy area nearby.