British tourists killed in Peru plane crash

A small plane carrying British tourists crashed near the famed Nazca Lines in Peru on Saturday, killing all six people on board, police said. The victims were listed as four Britons, three men and a woman, and the pilot and co-pilot, both Peruvian. The Cessna plane apparently had engine trouble that led it to crash in a field, the Nazca police chief Alfredo Coronel said. Police were working to recover the bodies.

An official who answered the phone at the British Embassy in Lima declined to comment without authorisation from London. The Nazca Lines, mysterious geoglyphs etched into the desert centuries ago by indigenous groups, are a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of Peru's leading tourist attractions. Located about 385 kilometres southeast of Lima, the glyphs are only fully recognisable from the air, and 30-minute overflights are popular with travellers.

However there have been allegations of lax supervision of the several-dozen aging planes that make the flights. In February, a Cessna 206 carrying three Chileans and four Peruvians over the lines crashed and killed everyone on board. Another crash in April 2008 killed five French tourists, though their pilot survived.