A Cuban-operated airliner with at least 110 people on board crashed into a cassava field just after takeoff from Havana’s international airport yesterday. There appeared to be mass casualties as Cuban officials said three people had survived, but had yet to give an official toll.

Authorities said there were 104 passengers and nine foreign crew members on the flight headed to the eastern city of Holguin. Witnesses said they saw a thick column of smoke near the airport.

“A column of black smoke rose up in the sky,” resident Ana Gonzalez told the Reuters news agency.

The plane lay in a field of yucca-root plants and appeared heavily damaged and burnt. Firefighters were trying to extinguish its smoldering remains. Government officials including President Miguel Diaz-Canel rushed to the site, along with a large number of emergency medical workers. Residents of the rural area said they had seen some survivors being taken away in ambulances.

“My daughter is 24, my God, she’s only 24!” cried Beatriz Pantoja, whose daughter Leticia was on board the plane. Pantoja and other family members were rushed to a private area inside an airport terminal in the afternoon.

The U.S. State Department is working to confirm whether any U.S. citizens were on board. Argentina’s Foreign Ministry says two of the South American nation’s citizens died in Friday’s crash. A ministry statement says Argentina is “deeply shaken” by the deaths.

Cubana, the country’s national airline company, rented the plane from Blue Panorama, Cuban media reports. Mexican authorities say the Boeing 737-201 was built in 1979.

A statement from the country’s Transportation Department identifies the pilot and co-pilot as Capt. Jorge Luis Nunez Santos and first officer Miguel Angel Arreola Ramirez. It says the flight attendants were Maria Daniela Rios, Abigail Hernandez Garcia and Beatriz Limon.

It adds that the plane was rented by Cuban state carrier Cubana de Aviacion from Aerolineas Damojh. That’s the legal name of a small charter company that also goes by Global Air.

Relatives of passengers rushed to the scene, among them a man who said his wife and niece had been on board. He declined to provide his full name before being taken to an airline terminal where relatives were being asked to gather.

An unidentified military officer said there appeared to have been three survivors in critical condition; other officials declined to confirm that figure.

Cuba’s First Vice-President, Salvador Valdes Mesa, had met Thursday with Cubana officials to discuss improvements in its heavily criticized service. The airline is notorious among Cubans for its frequent delays and cancellations, which Cubana blames on a lack of parts and airplanes due to the U.S. trade embargo on the island.

The crash Friday was Cuba’s third major fatal accident since 2010.

Last year, a Cuban military plane crashed into a hillside in the western province of Artemisa, killing eight troops on board. In November 2010, an AeroCaribbean flight from Santiago to Havana went down in bad weather as it flew over central Cuba, killing all 68 people on board, including 28 foreigners, in what was Cuba’s worst air disaster in more than two decades.

The last Cubana accident appeared to have been September 4, 1989, when a chartered Cubana plane flying from Havana to Milan, Italy, went down shortly after takeoff, killing all 126 people on board, as well as at least two dozen on the ground.

Cubana’s director general, Capt. Hermes Hernandez Dumas, told state media last month Cubana’s domestic flights had carried 11,700 more passengers than planned between January and April 2018. It said 64 percent of flights had taken off on time, up from 59 percent the previous year. “Among the difficulties created by the U.S. trade embargo is our inability to acquire latest-generation aircraft with technology capable of guaranteeing the stability of aerial operations,” Hernandez said. “Another factor is obtaining part for Cubana’s aircraft.”

Cuba declared national mourning until May 20. Cuban President Raul Castro, currently hospitalized while recovering from surgery, “asked that his condolences be given to the families of the victims of the catastrophic accident,” according to a statement.