Deadly Crash-Landing at Amsterdam Airport

Feb 25, 2009— -- A Turkish Airlines plane crash-landed short of a runway on arrival at Amsterdam's Schipol airport and smashed into three pieces, killing at least nine people and injuring over 50, according to Dutch authorities.

The Boeing 737-800 was flying from Istanbul to Amsterdam with at least 134 people on board. The cause of the crash is not yet clear. "I can't tell you anything about how this happened. Our priority is helping people," Michel Bezuijen, acting mayor of Haarlemmermeer, told reporters.

Flight TK 1951 crashed at 10:31 a.m. local time (0931 GMT) short of a runway at Europe's fifth-largest airport, and all air traffic was brought to a standstill.

"We are looking at a very large emergency ... it looks like we have lost a plane," said an air traffic controller in leaked recordings from the control tower.

"I was shaken awake and 10 seconds later we slammed into the ground," Mustafa Bahcecioglu, a Turkish passenger on the flight, told Dutch broadcaster the NOS.

Emergency services and locals immediately rushed to the scene to find dazed passengers walking away from the wreckage.

John Ansgar, who was driving nearby, jumped out of his car and ran to help the survivors. "Some of the people that had left the plane were lying on the ground, a lot of them had back injuries, and some were in shock," he told ABC News.

Bahcecioglu described a scene of chaos. "There are dead too, I am sure of that," he said. "And very many wounded. All that yelling and blood. I won the lottery: it is amazing that there's nothing wrong with me."

Ansgar arrived on the scene 14 minutes after the crash occurred, according to a message he posted on Twitter, the information-sharing Web site.

Already other eyewitnesses had described the scene of the crash on Twitter. "Looking at crashed airplane near Schiphol" one user, called Nipp, posted at 10:39.

"It looks like the plane is shredded," he wrote minutes later.

Photos of the crash were also uploaded onto the site within moments of the plane going down, as were eyewitness accounts from inside the airport. Several are saying the Web site carried the news long before any news organization.

"The plane split into three parts. We are calling people to say the situation is not very serious but there might be casualties on the front side of the plane," survivor Huseyin Sumer told CNN Turk by telephone just after the plane went down.

The middle of the plane appeared to be intact and about 30 or 40 people had easily exited, many of whom were shortly after phoning friends and family, according to Ansgar.