said on Wednesday. „There are 70 dead,“ from Tuesday night‘s accident, a morgue official told Reuters. „There are 10 people that were not on board the plane but were (killed) in the street.“ The death toll included motorists driving on a major artery alongside Jorge Newbery metropolitan airport, in the path of the Boeing 737 jet carrying 98 passengers and five crew. The aircraft shot off the runway and across the busy roadway before bursting into flames on a nearby golf course. So far, 44 people have been counted among the injured. Doctors said some survivors had up to 96 percent of their bodies covered in burns. Witnesses said severed limbs were strewn throughout the wreckage. The Lineas Aereas Privadas Argentinas (LAPA) flight attempted to take off for the Argentine city of Cordoba, northeast of the capital, but witnesses said the plane only lifted slightly off the ground before bouncing down the runway and through a perimeter fence. It ploughed through heavy traffic on Costanera Avenue before bursting into a fireball on a golf course by the River Plate. Unconfirmed media reports estimated the number of dead at 80, but work identifying the corpses was hindered by their horrifying burns, which meant some of the victims would have to be identified by DNA genetic testing. Only 16 had been identified as of Wednesday night. Families of passengers and crew flew in from Cordoba to hear conflicting reports on who had survived and at which of three Buenos Aires hospitals they could be found. Earlier in the day, Menem surveyed the crash site, only two miles (3 km) northeast of Government House and Buenos Aires‘ business district, from a police helicopter. Air Force investigators probed the burned-out hulk of the 29-year-old Boeing 737 and the area around the air strip. Boeing spokesman Sean Griffin said the plane was put into service in 1970 and had logged 67,400 flight hours, although it was designed to last 20 years and fly 50,000 flight hours. He said Boeing investigators had been sent to the crash scene. „We don‘t know what the causes are yet,“ LAPA president and owner Andy Deutsch said in a television interview. The aircraft went to a Varig repair hangar in Porto Alegre, Brazil, for an overhaul on July 16, he added. The Air Force could not confirm survivors‘ reports that the flight was delayed because of checks on an engine. Two „black box“ flight recorders were retrieved and the federal airport regulator promised to determine the cause within 48 hours. One of the boxes had the voices of the pilots during the flight‘s final moments, while the other contained technical information. Argentina‘s federal airport regulator, Rodolfo Barra, said he placed „responsibility for the tragedy on the company.“ He said the location of the metropolitan airport, just minutes from the densely populated city centre, was clearly a risk. Juan Jose Guiraldes, former director of Ezeiza International Airport, agreed. A foreign consultant advised the Argentine government in 1995 to shut the metropolitan airport because of the threat it posed to public safety, Guiraldes said.