BOGOTA, Colombia — A Colombian military transport plane crashed shortly after takeoff in the southern province of Putumayo, killing 69 service members and police officers and injuring 57 others, authorities said Tuesday, in one of the country’s deadliest military aviation disasters in recent years.
The crash quickly became more than a local emergency in the remote border town of Puerto Leguizamo. It set off a rescue effort in a hard-to-reach Amazon region, pushed wounded troops into hospitals in larger cities and opened a wider debate over the condition of Colombia’s military fleet. Investigators are still trying to determine why the C-130 Hercules went down so soon after liftoff, while the government has moved into a period of national mourning and families wait for updates on the injured and the identification of those killed.
The aircraft went down Monday morning after departing Puerto Leguizamo, a river town in Putumayo near the borders with Peru and Ecuador. Defense Minister Pedro Sanchez said the flight was carrying troops within the province, and Air Force commander Gen. Carlos Fernando Silva later said the plane came down about two kilometers from the airport after encountering a problem in the first moments of flight. The first response came from people living nearby. Videos shared by Colombian media showed residents and soldiers moving through smoke and debris while wounded passengers were carried away on motorcycles and trucks. Deputy Mayor Carlos Claros said the town’s two clinics treated the injured before military aircraft began transferring them to larger hospitals. In the first hours after the crash, officials spoke of 128 people aboard. By Tuesday, the armed forces said the official count was 126.
That revised count produced the final public balance now being used by the government: 69 dead and 57 injured. Gen. Hugo Alejandro Lopez Barreto, head of Colombia’s armed forces, called the accident a national tragedy and said, “Sadly, as a consequence of this tragic accident, 69 of our uniformed personnel died.” Officials also said there was no early indication that the plane had been brought down by an illegal armed group, an important point in a region where troops often operate against rebel and criminal networks. The bodies were first taken to the local morgue in Puerto Leguizamo, but authorities said forensic teams in Bogota would identify the remains before returning them to families. Survivors were spread across hospitals in the capital and other cities, with military evacuation planes sent to move the wounded out of a town whose medical system was quickly overwhelmed by the scale of the crash.
The disaster also highlighted how heavily Colombia still depends on air transport to move forces through its southern jungle. Putumayo is a remote province with long river corridors, limited roads and a history of armed conflict, trafficking routes and border security operations. In places like Puerto Leguizamo, cargo aircraft are not only military assets but basic lifelines, used to move troops, supplies and patients in areas where travel by land can be slow or impossible. That helps explain why the crash carried both military and political weight almost at once. What happened near the runway was not just the loss of one aircraft. It was also a blow to a system the armed forces use every day to reach distant outposts, reinforce units and keep a presence in territory where geography shapes almost every decision about transport and response time.
The aircraft itself has become a central part of the investigation. The plane was a Hercules C-130 that officials and analysts said had been donated by the United States in 2020 as part of a broader cooperation agreement. In 2023, it underwent an overhaul in which its engines were inspected and key components were replaced. Those details have kept investigators from settling on any simple explanation. Silva said only that the aircraft had a problem shortly after takeoff. Aviation analyst Erich Saumeth said the focus now should be on takeoff performance, loading conditions, engine behavior and the crew’s response in the first seconds of trouble. Former President Ivan Duque also pointed to technical questions that investigators will likely have to answer, including how much weight the plane was carrying and whether the airport’s roughly 1.2-kilometer runway left enough margin for a safe departure under the conditions that day.
President Gustavo Petro used the crash to renew his criticism of Colombia’s reliance on secondhand military equipment. In public remarks after the accident, he argued that bureaucratic delays had slowed efforts to modernize aircraft and other systems used by the armed forces. Critics answered that the government itself has struggled to execute defense contracts and has cut flight hours, which they say can reduce readiness. Neither side has publicly tied those broader disputes to a proven cause in Monday’s crash, and investigators have not released a technical finding. For now, the next steps are procedural and forensic. Military specialists are expected to secure wreckage, review maintenance records, study loading and flight documents and reconstruct the aircraft’s climb after departure. Authorities have not announced when a full passenger list, preliminary report or final accident report will be released. On Tuesday evening, Petro declared three days of national mourning for the victims.
By Tuesday, the story had moved from the crash site to hospital corridors and family waiting rooms. In Bogota, relatives arrived at military hospitals looking for news of sons, brothers and cousins who survived the impact but were badly hurt. In Puerto Leguizamo, local officials publicly thanked residents who ran toward the smoke before larger rescue teams reached the field where the plane fell. That local response became one of the clearest early images of the disaster: a small Amazon town trying to absorb a military loss far bigger than its clinics, roads and morgue were built to handle. The physical scene remained stark even a day later, with the wreckage near the airport edge, scorched ground around it and green jungle stretching beyond. The national response, however, had already widened into something larger, combining grief, urgent medical care, forensic work and a hard argument over how Colombia equips the forces it sends into its most isolated regions.
As of Tuesday, the official toll stood at 69 dead and 57 injured, and the cause of the crash remained under investigation. The next milestones are the return of identified remains to families, updates on the condition of survivors and the military’s first fuller account of what happened in the seconds after takeoff.
Author note: Last updated March 24, 2026.