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9 gold miners killed in Peru plane crash

A plane carrying workers headed to a gold mine in Peru’s northern Andes region crashed, killing all nine people on board.

LIMA (Reuters)  - 

A plane chartered by a small Peruvian gold mining company with nine people on board crashed on Wednesday in northern Peru, the company, Retamas, said.

Locals in the region told the Peruvian radio program RPP that the plane had crashed and burned after hitting power lines near an airport and that they had found the charred remains of the plane and those on board.

The company could not confirm that anyone had died and did not say what caused the crash. Seven of those aboard the plane were Retamas employees.

"A team of rescue workers has been dispatched to the area to attend to the emergency. The reasons for the accident are still unknown," the company said in a statement.

The plane left Lima early Wednesday for the La Libertad region in northwestern Peru, the local airports administrator CORPAC said.

Retamas is among Peru's top ten gold producers. Peru, the sixth largest gold producer in the world, exported more than 160 tonnes of gold last year.

(Reporting By Marco Aquino; editing by Christopher Wilson)