Explosion Precedes Crash Which Kills 59

A Romanian airliner crashed into a snowy field outside Bucharest minutes after takeoff Friday, killing all 59 people aboard. Witnesses reported seeing one or two explosions before the jet went down.

Three Americans were among those killed when the Tarom airlines Airbus A-310, en route to Brussels, Belgium, crashed in a sleet storm near the village of Balotesti, about a mile north of Otopeni airport.

“It looks as if it never existed,” Interior Minister Doru Ioan Taracila said after surveying the charred scraps of wreckage strewn about a potato field. “There’s nothing left of it.”

Two weeks ago, a Tarom flight to Brussels was forced to make an emergency landing in western Romania after the airline received an anonymous bomb threat, said spokeswoman Veronica Sabau. Nothing was found.

No threat was reported Friday. Airport officials said the crash occurred without warning.

“Until the moment of the crash, three minutes after takeoff, the plane was going very smoothly,” said Dan Andrei, a civil aviation official at Otopeni. He said weather had not been a major problem, noting that other planes had taken off without incident.

Transport Minister Aurel Novac, who cut short an official visit to London, said that according to preliminary eyewitness accounts, “it seems that we are talking about one explosion or even two,” the state news agency Rompres reported.

The 49 passengers were mostly Belgians. The American victims were identified as Terry Chung, a Treasury Department official; and the Rev. Norman Hoyt and his wife, Virginia, both 67, of Columbia, S.C.