Rescue workers searching for the Chilean Air Force plane en route to Antarctica that disappeared on Monday have found debris and human remains.
According to Chilean Air Force head Arturo Merino, there are likely no survivors.
“The condition of the remains we discovered make it practically impossible that anyone could have survived the plane accident,” he said, as reported by BBC.
Relatives of the 38 people on board the C130 Hercules — 21 passengers and 17 crew members — have been informed. Officials are conducting forensic analyses on the remains to confirm their origin, while Chile’s Legal Medical Service, the state coroner, began analyzing the blood of family members on Thursday.
Reuters reports that pieces of the aircraft were first discovered by Chilean air force officials late Wednesday. Soon after, a Brazilian ship found debris of the plane.
The C130 Hercules went missing at 6:13 p.m. on Monday, a little more than an hour after it took off from Punta Arenas, a southern city in the South American country. The aircraft, transporting military personnel, was headed to a Chilean base in Antarctica for maintenance on a floating fuel-supply pipeline.
The plane crashed over Drake’s Passage, a vast ocean of ice sheets off the southernmost edge of the South American continent.