Two die as aircraft crashes

Two men died yesterday when a light cargo plane crashed in Cumbria. Police recovered their bodies from the wreckage five miles from Eskdale.

The Brazilian-built Bandeirante aircraft, carrying parcels for United Parcel Services, the US courier, was on a flight from Southend in Essex to Glasgow when it came down at Ponsonby Fell, on the edge of the three-mile aircraft exclusion zone around Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant.

Environmentalists said the crash showed that British Nuclear Fuels, which operates Sellafield, was being unrealistic in saying that the risks of an aircraft hitting the plant were too low to consider.