7 Die in Peru Plane Crash

Seven people from three countries died Friday in a plane crash over the famous Nazca Lines in Peru, according to Reuters. The plane carried three Dutch tourists, two Chilean tourists, a Peruvian pilot, and a Peruvian co-pilot, the Guardian reports. The Cessna 207 plane was owned by a tourism company and was headed to see the UNESCO site, per the Hindustan Times. The plane crashed right after taking off from the Maria Reiche Airport in Nazca and caught fire after hitting the ground, police say. The bodies were left unrecognizable, but the passengers were identified by the Aerosantos company that owned the plane.

The cause is under investigation. The last plane crash near the Nazca Lines was in 2010, when four British tourists and two Peruvian crew members died in an AirNasca-owned plane. Sightseeing flights are popular in the Nazca area, per media reports. The Nazca Lines are literal lines that were sketched into the desert between 500 BC and 500 AD that can usually only be spotted from the sky; they were a calendar or part of a ritual and are located about 220 miles from Peru's capital city of Lima. Some of the etchings—which include animals, mythical beings, plants, and geometric shapes—are miles long. (More plane crash stories.)