A small plane crashed shortly after taking off from the Honduran island of Roatan on Monday, killing 12 people.
Aurelio Martinez, a musician and politician in the country, was among the victims.
The civil aeronautics agency of Honduras said the crash occurred around 6:18 p.m. after the plane took off from the popular tourist destination for La Ceiba, a city on the mainland, from Juan Manuel Gálvez International Airport. The plane went down in the Caribbean Sea about a minute into the flight.
“The plane almost fell on us. I was fishing,” a fisherman, whose name was not given, told HCH television.
The cause of the crash is still under investigation.
The Lanhsa Airlines plane, a Jetstream 32, was carrying 15 passengers and two crew members.
The survivors were taken to a local hospital, but their condition is unknown.
The National Police of Honduras said all but one of the bodies of the victims was recovered by Tuesday morning.
Honduran President Xiomara Castro said she’d activated the country’s emergency committee to ensure the resources required by first responders are available.
Martinez, a popular member of the Garifuna music scene, was the first Afro-Honduran member of the National Congress of Honduras. He was 56 years old.
“A prodigy of percussion, Aurelio began performing at Garifuna ceremonies when just a boy, he grew into an innovative professional artist forming the Lita Ariran ensemble and became a mainstay of the La Ceiba music scene…His loss will be felt beyond the Garifuna people to audiences worldwide who love and cherish Caribbean culture,” Real Worlds Records said in a statement.