MADRID, Spain - A jetliner heading to the popular Canary Islands vacation resort crashed during takeoff Wednesday, turning a wooded area off the end of a runway into a hellish scene of charred bodies and smoldering wreckage. Some 153 were believed dead -- Spain's worst air disaster in nearly 25 years.
Only 19 people survived the midafternoon crash of the Spanair MD-82 at Madrid's Barajas International Airport, and some were in critical condition, said Development Minister Magdalena Alvarez, whose department oversees civil aviation in Spain. She initially reported 26 survivors.
The airline didn't release a death toll, but said the plane carried 172 passengers and crew.
As smoke billowed from the wreckage, dozens of fire trucks and ambulances rushed to help, lining a nearby road and filling a field next to a swath of charred vegetation. Helicopters flew over dumping water on fires.
"The scene is devastating," said Pablo Albella, an emergency rescue worker. "The fuselage is destroyed. The plane burned. I have seen a kilometer of charred land and few whole pieces of the fuselage. It is all destruction."
Rescuers rushed the few survivors to hospitals, while emergency workers shrouded the dead in white sheets. One body lay on burned grass, an arm and a leg poking out.
Later, a long convoy of black hearses rolled onto the airport grounds to carry bodies to a makeshift morgue set up at Madrid's main convention center. Flight departures resumed after several hours.
It was not immediately clear what went wrong. Alvarez said the jetliner had barely gotten airborne when it veered right, crashed and broke into pieces.
A spokesman for Spanair, a Spanish company wholly owned by Scandinavian Airlines, said it did not know what caused the accident. Alvarez, the government minister, said investigators ruled out foul play and considered the crash an accident.
While preparing for a first takeoff attempt, the plane's pilot reported a breakdown in a gauge that measures temperature outside the plane. The gauge was fixed, delaying the departure, said Spanair spokeswoman Susana Vergara.
It was on the second takeoff attempt that the plane crashed.
The Spanair spokesman, Sergio Allard, originally said Flight JK5022 to Las Palmas had 175 passengers and crew aboard, but the airline later put the number at 172. The flight, which originated in Barcelona, was a code-share with Flight LH255 of the German carrier Lufthansa.
Allard declined to give any numbers on the nationalities of those on board, saying relatives had to be notified first.
