The death toll in the crash of a Moscow-bound East German airliner that overshot the runway in an aborted takeoff rose to 17 Saturday night, the official news agency ADN reported.
Rescuers found more bodies as they searched the wreckage, and two passengers died in the hospital from their injuries, the agency said.Earlier, East German Transport Minister Otto Arndt told a news conference at East Berlin's Schoenefeld airport that five passengers were known to have died and eight others were missing. Arndt said 39 survivors were in the hospital, some with serious burns or suffering from smoke inhalation.
The Soviet-built Ilyushin IL-62 carrying 113 passengers and crew hurtled off the runway after it attempted takeoff and crashed in a corn field where it caught fire. Apart from passengers and crew, a farmer was killed.
Fifty-three passengers escaped uninjured as the plane of the state airline Interflug broke up.
Arndt said the figures had fluctuated during the day because passersby had picked up survivors to take to the hospital or their homes, complicating the official tally.
But the right wing stayed intact, enabling 100 passengers to get out before the aviation fuel ignited and the plane was engulfed in flames.
The wreckage lay blackened in the corn field, the tail broken off and the cockpit twisted to one side. Virtually nothing remained of the fuselage and the interior, except for charred seats and piles of East German newspapers.
Witnesses and survivors told East German reporters the nose of the aircraft rose as if for liftoff and then bumped down again.
Arndt said all 11 of Interflug's remaining IL-62s had been grounded until the inquiry he heads finds out what went wrong with Flight IF102, the first East German airline accident since 1975.
He said airport firefighters were on the scene in minutes and smothered the blazing fuel-laden jet with foam. This helped to explain why so many people got out before the flames took hold, destroying much of the red and white fuselage.
Arndt said it was not yet clear whether there were foreign victims. There were 11 Russians, two Poles, two Italians and one Nepalese aboard the plane, which can carry up to 168 passengers.
The last accident in East Germany was in December 1986 when a Soviet plane crashed in woods near East Berlin airport, killing 72 people. That crash was blamed on pilot error.