President Reacts as Plane Crash Kills House of Reps Member

“I am deeply saddened by these deaths. My heartfelt condolences to their families. May they rest in peace,” Colombian President Gustavo Petro wrote on X.

A small passenger plane crashed in northeast Colombia on Wednesday, killing all 15 people on board, including a member of congress, authorities said.

The aircraft belonging to the state-owned airline Satena lost contact with air traffic control minutes after takeoff just before noon, Satena said in a statement.

Officials from a nearby community notified authorities where the plane had gone down, prompting the deployment of a rescue team.

Colombia’s Transportation Ministry later released a statement saying that “once the aircraft was located on site, authorities regrettably confirmed that there were no survivors.”

Aerial tracking data indicates that the plane lost transmission while flying over a mountainous area between the municipalities of Ábrego and La Playa, a difficult to access area in the Norte de Santander province in northeast Colombia.

Transport Minister María Fernanda Rojas confirmed that emergency protocols had been activated and that the Colombian Civil Aviation Authority launched an investigation into the loss of communication.

On board were two crew members and 13 passengers, including the 36-year-old Diógenes Quintero, a member of the House of Representatives for Catatumbo, the airline said.

Quintero was a prominent human rights defender in the troubled border region with Venezuela, where he was from and where the accident occured. A lawyer by profession, he was elected in 2022 as one of 16 representatives in the lower chamber to represent the more than 9 million victims of Colombia’s decades-long armed conflict.

His party, the U Party, expressed their remorse for his death and said he was “a leader committed to his region, with a firm vocation for service.”