Turkish airliner crashes at Amsterdam airport, 9 dead

By Harro ten Wolde and Gilbert Kreijger

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Turkish Airlines plane with 134 passengers and crew aboard crashed in light fog while trying to land at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring dozens.

Officials said some 84 people were taken to hospitals, including 25 who were severely hurt, when flight TK 1951 from Istanbul crashed into a field short of a runway at Schiphol, Europe's fifth-largest airport by passenger volume.

Six were in critical condition.

"We cannot say anything about the cause at the moment," acting local mayor Michel Bezuijen told reporters. "The priority...is providing help and care."

The bodies of three crew members, left in the cockpit amid the plane's wreckage for investigation, were later taken out. Dutch media said the pilot and co-pilot were among the dead.

Officials said they had found the plane's flight data recorder and that it would be analyzed.

Earlier, Dutch officials said 135 people were on board the plane, but that was revised to 134.

Dutch television showed what appeared to be covered bodies on the ground near the crumpled, single-aisle Boeing 737-800.