A tragic Wednesday shook the north of Colombia following the crash of a Searca plane serving the state-owned Satena. After several hours of uncertainty, the aircraft was located by peasants in a hard-to-reach area near the Venezuelan border. The plane, carrying 13 passengers and two crew members, crashed about 30 minutes from the urban area of La Playa de Belén. The operation to recover the 15 bodies presents an extreme challenge for the Colombian government. According to the Argentine News Agency, the first official reports indicate that the impact was of such magnitude that the structure was "completely destroyed". The departmental security secretary, Jorge Quintero, was the one to confirm the news no one wanted to hear: "We have no reports of any survivors".
In addition to the rugged geography, the area is under the influence of ELN guerrillas and FARC dissidents, forcing the Army and Air Force to deploy operations with strict security measures to protect rescue teams. The Civil Aviation Authority reported a worrying fact: the plane's emergency beacon was never activated, which delayed the initial satellite tracking and forced a reliance on sightings by locals. In the face of this irregularity, a team of cartographers and specialists has been dispatched to determine the causes of the accident. The region's governor has already activated international protocols for the recovery operation. While waiting for better weather and security conditions to enter the "red zone", the victims' relatives are gathering at the origin airports awaiting the formal identification of the remains.