SEVEN SURVIVE ANDES CRASH

Red Cross officials say that at least seven people survived the crash late Wednesday of an American Airlines jetliner carrying 164 people from Miami to Cali, Colombia. Two men, two women and a young girl were found early Thursday in the wreckage of the Boeing 757 near Buga, a rural Colombian town 40 miles north of Cali. Rescue workers later found two more survivors, and continue to search for more. The survival of even that many people seems almost impossible in a devastating crash that covered the area with bits of bodies and wreckage. Flight 965 is apparently the deadliest air disaster since a terrorist bomb exploded Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland seven years ago today, on December 21, 1988. FBI agents were headed to the site, but there was no indication that the crash was anything more than an accident. Aviation officials said the plane was 13 miles west of its flight plan when it went down, and that weather conditions were good. The Boeing 757 lost radio contact at about 9:45 p.m. Wednesday while flying over Buga. "We saw when the plane crashed against a mountain and then a huge fireball erupted," witness Carlos Buitrago told the local Radio Caracol. A farmer who walked for three hours to the site told the station: "I saw only pieces where the plane crashed and clothing hanging from the trees . . . The largest piece of plane remaining was only two meters (two yards) long." American Airlines says the pilot and co-pilot were both U.S. citizens and that the crew was based in Bogota, but had no other information about nationalities. BTW: