Spanish PM praises men who helped save Seville plane crash survivors
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Version 0 of 1. Spanish authorities have praised the bravery of farm workers who helped pull two survivors away from the burning wreckage of an Airbus A400M military transport plane that had crashed near Seville airport. Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, posted a photograph of himself on Twitter talking on Sunday to a farmer who had helped save the crewmen injured in Saturday’s crash. Rajoy called the man “a hero for us all”. Charlando con Manuel, el agricultor que ha salvado a los heridos del A400M en Sevilla. Un héroe para todos nosotros pic.twitter.com/JqLbTF7gvW The Spanish state television TVE and the regional newspaper Diario de Sevilla on Sunday featured interviews with Francisco Miranda Escudero, who described how he and three other men had seen two people emerging from the broken fuselage and jumping down four to five metres to the ground. “The flames were horrifying and the continuous explosions tremendous,” said Miranda Escudero as he explained how he and Manuel Iglesias – the man in Rajoy’s photograph – had pulled the injured away from the explosions. He said the two owners of the field where the plane crashed also ran over to help them drag the men to safety. The plane, which was undergoing flight trials, destroyed a high-tension electricity pylon as it smashed into a field, killing four people on board. An Airbus spokesman, Kieran Daly, said it had been crewed by two pilots, three flight test engineers and a technician. The A400M was developed by Airbus to replace the ageing Hercules transport planes. The machine that crashed had been due for delivery to Turkey in June. |