Survivors tell of escape from Turkish jet inferno

Survivors of the Turkish Airlines plane crash that killed up to 75 people in the south-eastern city of Diyarbakir told yesterday of their remarkable escape.

Aliye Il, said she heard a loud bang. "As we were preparing to land, there was a massive noise and the plane crashed into the ground and fell apart," she recalled. "I fell out into a bundle of hay some distance away. Then the plane split into two and burst into flames, setting the hay on fire too. It was a terrible sight."

Another survivor, Celal Tokmak, who was suffering from burns, said: "There was abnormal fog at the airport. I heard a loud explosion right before we were to land, it felt like my ear exploded ... I heard a loud explosion after the crash. At first I thought there was a war. Is this an attack? I didn't think it was a crash."

Abdullah Gul, the Turkish Prime Minister, said the military had dismissed the possibility of sabotage. Fog had been a problem in the area in recent days and flights from Diyarbakir were cancelled earlier this week. "The reason for the crash is being investigated," Mr Gul said. "Most probably it was bad weather conditions."

Officials said the pilot of the four-engine British Aerospace RJ-100 passenger aircraft ­ commonly used for internal flights in Turkey ­ did not issue a mayday call. Rescue teams checked the wreckage for survivors as the flames subsided, but called off the search by midnight. Television pictures showed the remains of the fuselage and engines still smoking several hours after the crash.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London said: "We understand there were at least two Britons on the flight who are missing, presumed dead. Their names are not among the list of survivors published so far by the Turkish authorities." No further details could be released until their next-of-kin had been informed, he added.

The airport in Diyarbakir, capital of the mainly Kurdish region, is a wide expanse of land shared by military and civil air traffic. There has been much speculation that the airport, within reach of the Iraqi border, is on a list of airfields America has asked to use in the event of an attack on Iraq. Air defence missiles were deployed there during the Gulf War in 1991.

Yesterday's air crash was the worst in Turkey for many years. In May 2001, a military plane crashed in south-eastern Turkey, killing 34 special forces soldiers. In 1991 an civilian airliner crashed in eastern Turkey, killing 55 people after the pilot insisted on landing despite a snowstorm that cut visibility.