BOGOTA, Colombia — A Colombian military transport plane crashed shortly after takeoff in the Amazon province of Putumayo on Monday, killing 69 service members and police officers and injuring 57 others in one of the country’s deadliest military aviation disasters in years.
The crash quickly became more than a local emergency in Puerto Leguizamo. It set off a rescue effort in a remote border town, sent wounded troops to hospitals in larger cities and opened a fresh political fight over the condition of Colombia’s military fleet. Officials initially reported at least 66 dead, but the armed forces raised the toll to 69 on Tuesday. Authorities have said there is no early sign of an attack by an illegal armed group, and investigators are now focused on the aircraft, its takeoff and the conditions that led to the fall.
The aircraft, a C-130 Hercules military transport plane, went down minutes after leaving Puerto Leguizamo in southern Colombia on Monday morning. Military officials said the flight was carrying troops and police personnel within Putumayo, a remote province near the borders with Peru and Ecuador. Early public counts from commanders said 128 people were aboard, including 115 Army personnel, 11 crew members and two National Police officers. By Tuesday, the armed forces said 126 people were on the plane, with 69 dead and 57 injured. That later count became the official balance used by the government as recovery teams continued to work. Air Force commander Gen. Carlos Fernando Silva said the aircraft had a problem during the initial phase of flight and came down about two kilometers from the airport. Gen. Hugo Alejandro Lopez Barreto, head of the armed forces, called the loss a national tragedy and said, “Sadly, as a consequence of this tragic accident, 69 of our uniformed personnel died.”
The first accounts from the ground described a crash site that was hard to reach and chaotic in the first minutes after impact. Firefighter Eduardo San Juan Callejas told Colombian media that the aircraft appeared to hit near the end of the runway and that one wing clipped a tree as the plane fell. He said the impact caused a fire and explosions from material being carried on board. Deputy Mayor Carlos Claros said local residents rushed toward the smoke and helped remove injured people before larger military vehicles arrived. In Puerto Leguizamo, a town with only two clinics, bodies were taken to the local morgue while the wounded were divided between nearby care centers before later transfer to larger hospitals. Officials said 57 survivors were hospitalized, and military aircraft equipped for medical evacuation were sent to move many of them to Bogota and other cities. Authorities have not released a full sequence of cockpit communications, a formal takeoff timeline or a detailed explanation of the plane’s final seconds. Those gaps have left the public with a broad outline of the disaster, but few technical answers.
The crash struck at the center of Colombia’s long military dependence on large cargo aircraft to reach jungle zones where roads are poor and rivers often shape movement more than highways do. Puerto Leguizamo sits in the southern Amazon basin and has strategic value because of its isolation, border position and history of armed group activity and trafficking routes. The Hercules aircraft has been part of Colombian military operations for decades, carrying troops, equipment and supplies into hard to reach areas. Aviation analyst Erich Saumeth said the plane that crashed had been donated by the United States in 2020 and underwent an overhaul in 2023 that included inspections of its engines and replacement of key components. President Gustavo Petro seized on the accident to question the military’s use of secondhand planes and said bureaucratic delays had slowed efforts to modernize equipment. Former President Ivan Duque pushed back and urged a rigorous investigation into issues such as aircraft weight and runway length. Neither side has presented evidence tying those broader disputes directly to Monday’s crash, but the exchange showed how fast the disaster widened into a debate over defense planning, maintenance and readiness.
The next steps are technical, medical and forensic. Military aviation investigators are expected to secure the wreckage, review maintenance files, examine loading records and reconstruct the aircraft’s performance during takeoff. Officials have said there is no current evidence that rebels or another illegal armed group brought the aircraft down, which narrows the early focus to mechanical failure, takeoff performance, crew actions or another operational problem. The remains of the dead are being identified in Bogota before they are returned to families. The injured have been spread across hospitals for continued treatment, with officials saying many were flown out of Puerto Leguizamo because local capacity was limited. The government on Wednesday announced three days of national mourning in memory of the 69 uniformed personnel who died. Authorities have not announced a date for a final accident report or any public hearing on the crash, and they have not said when a full passenger list and sequence of events will be released. For now, the investigation remains open, with the most important unanswered question still the simplest one: why a transport flight failed almost as soon as it left the runway.
By Tuesday, the human side of the disaster had shifted to hospital corridors and waiting areas far from the crash site. At a military hospital in Bogota, relatives arrived looking for news of soldiers who survived. AP photographs showed family members of Mauro Penaranda and Antonio Lopez waiting outside as treatment continued inside. In Puerto Leguizamo, residents who had helped carry the wounded from the wreckage became part of the story officials told about the response. Claros thanked townspeople for running toward danger in the first moments after the fall, and Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez said the crash was deeply painful for the country. The images from the scene remained stark: a transport plane destroyed near the edge of a runway, smoke rising above green terrain and a rural town trying to absorb the scale of a military loss that reached well beyond its borders. What began as a local rescue turned, within hours, into a national day of grief.
As of Tuesday, the official toll stood at 69 dead and 57 injured, and investigators were still working to establish the cause of the crash. The next milestones are the return of identified remains to families, updates on the injured and the military’s first detailed account of what happened after takeoff.
Author note: Last updated March 24, 2026.