In what looks like a movie, a suspected drug smugglers plane was found ablaze by the Mexican military officials on a jungle road after it made an illegal landing when military aircraft started following it.
According to a post by the top Quintana Roo state police official, the jet which is suspected of carrying hundreds kilos of drugs was discovered in flames on the Yucatan Peninsula, showed smoke from the jet as it sat on a rural two-lane highway.
It is alleged the crew would have landed and burned the plane in order to escape, when they discovered they were tracked. The Defense Department said the plane had arrived from South America and had been tracked since it entered Mexican airspace, two air force planes were dispatched to trail the jet and troops were flown to the landing site.
The Mexican military in a statement said, it is unclear whether the plane made the emergency landing and then burst into flames or whether the traffickers purposely set it on fire as troops found a pickup truck loaded with 13 sacks of cocaine weighing a total of about 850 pounds down the highway, headed toward the neighboring state of Yucatan. With an estimated value of more than $4.9million, the loss would have a ‘significant’ impact on criminal organizations.
The website Aviation Safety Network identified the plane as a decades-old BAe-125 15-seat passenger jet. It’s unclear what year the jet was manufactured, but its price could range between $500,000 and $1million.
Additional information from dailymail.co.uk