It was not immediately known what caused the crash but witnesses said the weather at the time was treacherous.<\/p>\n
\u201cA heavy hailstorm\u201d was falling and \u201cthere was lightning\u201d when the plane went down, Cristina Choque, a 60-year-old vendor whose car was struck by the aircraft wreckage, told AFP.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tyre is what fell on top of us… my daughter is injured, she has a head wound,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
The Ministry of Defence said it would launch an investigation into the crash.<\/p>\n
Colonel Pavel Tovar of the National Fire Department told reporters that \u201cbetween 15 and 16 [dead] people have been counted\u201d in the disaster.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are recovering the bodies of these people who have sadly suffered in the accident,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bolivia\u2019s health ministry reported at least 28 people were injured.<\/p>\n
Money grab \u2018a crime\u2019 <\/p>\n
Fatalities were recorded both at the airport and on the busy avenue where the plane crashed and struck several vehicles.<\/p>\n
The Bolivian Air Navigation and Airports authority NAABOL said in a statement that the C-130 departed from the eastern city of Santa Cruz and crashed while landing at the international airport, which suspended its operations.<\/p>\n
The C-130 Hercules \u2013 manufactured by Lockheed Martin \u2013 was carrying Bolivian banknotes, which scattered upon impact.<\/p>\n
Footage from local media showed police using tear gas to disperse people who approached the crash site to gather the money.<\/p>\n
The defence ministry in a statement said that \u201cthe money transported in the crashed aircraft has no official serial number… therefore it has no legal or purchasing power\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said that \u201cits collection, possession, or use constitutes a crime\u201d.<\/p>\n
Choque and her family remained inside their wrecked vehicle for fear of being looted by the crowd.<\/p>\n
The La Paz Prosecutor\u2019s Office received reports of looting of businesses by criminals who took advantage of the chaos in the streets.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwelve people have been arrested\u201d for questioning, prosecutor Luis Carlos Torres told reporters.<\/p>\n
Operations at El Alto International Airport, the second most important in Bolivia, were suspended.<\/p>\n
Hospitals in El Alto also launched a blood donation campaign to treat the injured.<\/p>\n
La Paz, at an altitude of 3650m and surrounded by Andean peaks, is the highest administrative capital in the world.<\/p>\n
\u2013 Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was not immediately known what caused the crash but witnesses said the weather at the time was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2327,806,69328,167693,29422,690,42,78,647,43,15026,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-306831","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-2327","9":"tag-as","10":"tag-bolivia","11":"tag-cashpacked","12":"tag-crashes","13":"tag-dead","14":"tag-headlines","15":"tag-in","16":"tag-military","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-plane","19":"tag-top-news","20":"tag-top-stories","21":"tag-topnews","22":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}