Spanish army is blamed by relatives for plane crash

Relatives of 62 Spanish soldiers who died in a plane crash in Turkey condemned as "antiquated" and "precarious" the Ukrainian aircraft which the troops used for long-haul flights.

Spain was in mourning yesterday for the soldiers, who were returning to Zaragoza after completing peace-keeping duties in Afghanistan. There was also concern about the reliability of the plane, hired from Ukraine by the Spanish army to ferry troops on trans-continental missions.

Mari Paz Fernandez, whose husband Commander Jose Manuel Ripolles died in the crash on Monday, said: "We want to establish who was responsible. We aren't prepared to let this rest. We will investigate, we won't accept excuses."

Ms Fernandez said aircraft such as the Russian-built Yakovlev 42 that crashed into a mountain while trying to land in fog were decades old, and lacked a big enough petrol tank to fly direct from Afghanistan to Spain. She added: "They made long, dangerous journeys with many refuelling stops.

"In every flight they had to make two or three of these dangerous manoeuvres."

Ms Fernandez, who has a son and a daughter, said that her husband and his comrades were "afraid to fly in these aircraft". Often, she said, families had criticised the planes chartered for humanitarian missions as "antiquated and precarious". She said the army should charter Spanish planes which had proper technology.

Defence Ministry sources said that the army often resorted to planes from the former Soviet Union because of their low cost, and because Spain did not own aircraft large enough to ferry troops home.

Federico Trillo, Spain's Defence Minister, said yesterday that "Spain needed to increase its own transport capacities".

But he refused to accept that the Ukrainian plane was unsafe. He said: "It was absolutely safe, not only because it was a plane intended for these missions, but it also had most guarantees in the market, according to Nato." Mr Trillo said all the bodies had been identified, and would probably be flown back to Spain today.

The Defence Ministry said on Monday that the aircraft which crashed belonged to Nato's transport agency Namsa, which orchestrates long-haul troop movements for countries in the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.

But Nato's Maintenance and Supply Agency (Namsa) said that the aircraft did not belong to them. A spokesman said Namsa put Spain in contact with a broker who spoke to Ukrainian Mediterranean Airlines (UM Air), which owned the plane. Namsa said Spain was the first and only country to use its services to charter transport planes, according to press reports yesterday. Mr Trillo said Spain had used the Yakovlev 42 on 40 flights "without any problem or technical hitch".

The plane's 15-year-old navigation and communications systems had been upgraded in 2001 and re-checked last month, a spokesman for UM Air said. But Ukraine's Transport Ministry said that UM Air had not requested to fly from Kabul to Zaragoza. A ministry spokesman said "serious violations" were found in the company's certification, licensing and reporting procedures.