Plane Hits New York

NEW YORK, Monday - An American Airlines Airbus A-300 passenger jet crashed while taking off from New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, ploughing through nearby homes and sending new fears through a city still jittery from the September 11 World Trade Centre attacks. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani said there were no survivors. Already on high security alert since the twin tower attacks that killed some 4,300 people, officials sealed off all bridges and tunnels into and out of the city and shut down all area airports. Flight 587 was bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, the Federal Aviation Administration said. The plane was carrying 246 passengers and nine crew members, CNN said. Stocks fell sharply and the dollar tumbled immediately after news of the crash. The bond market was closed. There was no indication of the cause of the crash, just two months and a day after two hijacked passenger planes crashed into the World Trade Centre. Those planes, like a third that crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth that crashed in Pennsylvania, were scheduled to be long flights and fully loaded with fuel. Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police said all three New York area airports — Kennedy, Newark International Airport and La Guardia — were shut down. Smoke could be seen from as far away as the United Nations in Manhattan, and power and telephones were knocked out in the surrounding neighbourhood. Witnesses told Fox-5 television news that the Airbus’ left wing near the fuselage caught fire, a part of the plane fell off and then the plane fell like a stone to the ground. Witness Jackie Power told ABC News: “All of a sudden on the right of the plane. ... I don’t know whether it was a fire or explosion. And the plane just plummeted. We heard this enormous crash.” “The nose of the plane was going straight down,” Susan Locke, an eyewitness, told NY1 television. U.N. security chief Michael McCann announced that U.S. law enforcement authorities had sealed off the United Nations compound as a precautionary measure after the airplane crash. “There is no air traffic over New York City. All tunnels and bridges have been closed, and no vehicle traffic is entering New York city,” McCann announced over the U.N. loudspeaker system. In view of these precautions, “we have been advised not to evacuate the complex at this time,” McCann said. Osama bin Laden, blamed by Washington for masterminding the September suicide airliner attacks on the US, said in a recent message that the UN was anti-Muslim and had thrown its weight behind the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. In a videotaped statement broadcast on Saturday on Al-Jazeera television, bin Laden accused the world body of siding with the US and said Arab leaders still with the UN are infidels.” He attacked UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as a “criminal” for ushering largely Roman Catholic East Timor to independence from Muslim Indonesia. He said this was an example of a “chain of plots” mounted by the UN against Islam. Ends