Morocco's state news agency says 78 dead in military plane cras Morocco plane crash kills 78 2011

Rescue workers carry a body from the site of a military plane crash in a mountainous region of Morocco. (AFP/Getty Images / July 26, 2011) By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times A military plane crash in a remote mountainous region of Morocco on Tuesday

Reporting from Beirut—

A military plane crash in a remote mountainous region of Morocco on Tuesday killed at least 78 people and seriously injured three, according to the North African nation's official news agency.

The C-130 transport plane carried 60 soldiers, nine crew members and a dozen civilians and was preparing to land at an airport near the border with the disputed region of Western Sahara, according to local media reports. The wounded were taken to a military hospital in the nearby town of Guelmim while a search of the site continued, the Maghreb Arabe Presse agency reported.

Amateur video footage broadcast on Arab television appeared to show the blackened remains of the plane across the side of a mountain.

According to a statement by Morocco's Royal Armed Forces, bad weather caused the crash, described as one of the deadliest aviation accidents in recent Moroccan history.

The news agency said the plane was transporting troops either to or from Laayoune and Dakhla, both cities in Western Sahara, a sparsely populated desert coastal territory 100 miles south of the crash site.

The vast coastal region has been the site of a 36-year insurgency waged by Polisario separatists seeking autonomy from Morocco, which claims the territory as its own.

Rescue workers carry a body from the site of a military plane crash in a mountainous region of Morocco. (AFP/Getty Images / July 26, 2011) By Borzou Daragahi, Los Angeles Times A military plane crash in a remote mountainous region of Morocco on Tuesday
The plane, a C-130 used for troop transport, belonged to Morocco's Royal Armed Forces was carrying 60 members of the Moroccan military, 12 civilians and 9 crew members when it slammed into a mountain about five miles from the city of

Nearly 80 people were killed on Tuesday morning when a Moroccan Royal Armed Forces C-130 Hercules transport aircraft crashed into a southern Morocco mountain during bad weather, state-run media reported. There were three survivors