More than 100 people have been killed when a Boeing 737 crashed soon after taking off from Havana in what appears to be Cuba's worst air disaster in nearly 30 years, leaving only three survivors.
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The passenger plane, on a domestic flight to Holguin in eastern Cuba, crashed at 12.08pm on Friday (2.08am on Saturday AEST).
There were 105 passengers, including five children, plus crew members, state media reported.
Five of the passengers and the crew were foreign, according to media reports.
Two Argentine citizens and an unspecified number of Mexicans were among the dead, the Argentine and Mexican governments said.
The Australian embassy in Mexico was making urgent inquiries to determine whether any Australians were involved.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel said in broadcast comments that a high number of people appeared to have been killed.
He said the fire from the crash had been extinguished and authorities were identifying bodies.
Diaz-Canel said authorities were investigating the cause of the crash.
Cuba declared an official period of mourning on May 20.
Former Cuban president Raul Castro, who now heads the country's ruling Communist Party, offered his condolences to the families of those who died in the crash as he recovered from a hernia operation, state media reported
Blackened wreckage of Flight CU972 was strewn over the crash site, 20km south of Havana.
"We heard an explosion and then saw a big cloud of smoke go up," said Gilberto Menendez, who runs a restaurant near the crash site in the agricultural area of Boyeros.
The flight's destination, Holguin, is the capital of a province popular with tourists for its pristine beaches.
Carlos Alberto Martinez, director of Havana's Calixto Garcia hospital, told Reuters that four victims were brought there and one died.
Three others, all women, were in a serious condition, he said.
"She is alive but very burnt and swollen," one of the women's relatives said at the hospital.
The Mexican transport department said on its website: "During take-off (the plane) apparently suffered a problem and dived to the ground."
The Boeing 737-201 aircraft was built in 1979 and leased by Cuban airline Cubana from a small Mexican company called Damojh, according to the Mexican government.
Damojh in Mexico said it did not immediately have any more information. Cubana declined to comment.
Mexico said it would send a team of investigators from its Directorate-General of Civil Aeronautics on Saturday. Most aircraft accidents take months to investigate.
A US State Department official said the agency was not aware of any request for US assistance at this time but the National Transportation Safety Board and Federal Aviation Administration had offered to assist in the investigation.
Boeing Co said in a statement that its technical team stood "ready to assist as permitted under US law and at the direction of the US National Transportation Safety Board and Cuban authorities".
The US has a decades-old trade embargo on the island.
Australian Associated Press
