Ecuador plane carrying 92 crashes along Colombian border

QUITO, Ecuador (AP) -- An Ecuadorean jetliner that was carrying 92 people crashed Monday in the high Andes Mountains across the border in Colombia, an airline spokesman said.

The Boeing 727-100 from Ecuador's TAME airline lost radio contact at 10:23 a.m., the Civil Aviation department said in a statement. It was carrying 83 passengers and nine crew members, the statement said.

A TAME spokesman told The Associated Press said the plane crashed in Colombian territory near Ipiales, a city just across the border from the plane's destination, the Ecuadorean city of Tulcan. "We don't have any more information at this time."

The plane was heading from Quito, the capital, to Tulcan to the north in the Andes. Its last contact was with the control tower at the Tulcan airport. Ipiales is 30 miles northeast of Tulcan. The mayor's office of Ipiales said the airport was closed because of fog.

It was the second crash this month in the jungle-covered border region.

A plane from Ecuador's state-owned oil company with 26 people on board crashed in Colombian territory Jan. 17 while heading from Quito to Lago Agrio, an oil outpost in the Amazon jungle 110 miles northeast of the capital.

Six days later, searchers found the wreckage of the twin-engine propeller plane on a hillside a few miles across the border. All 21 passengers and five crew members on board died.

Tulcan is about 30 miles northwest of where the oil company plane crashed.