Defence Minister Pedro Sánchez said on X that the “tragic accident” occurred in Puerto Leguizamo, a remote municipality in the Amazonian province of Putumayo, which borders the neighbouring South American countries of Peru and Ecuador.
President Gustavo Petro wrote in a post on X that at least one person was killed, 83 were injured, and the status of 43 others was yet to be determined. He said the cause of the crash was unknown, AlJazeera reported.
The air force said that 121 people were on board the Hercules C-130 plane, including 110 soldiers and 11 crew members. It said the plane had been transporting soldiers to another city in the Putumayo province. Officials earlier said that 125 people had been on board.
Carlos Fernando Silva, the commander of Colombia’s Air Force, said details of the crash were not yet known, “except that the plane had a problem and went down about 2 kilometres [1.2 miles] from the airport”.
The air force commander added that two planes, with 74 beds, had been sent to the area to fly the injured back to hospitals in the capital, Bogota, and elsewhere.
Colombia acquired its first Hercules C-130 plane in the late 1960s and has more recently modernised some older C-130s with newer models sent from the United States.
Last month, another Hercules C-130 belonging to the Bolivian Air Force crashed in the city of El Alto, barely missing a residential building.
