French general describes 'horror' of Spain jet crash

A French general on Thursday described the scene of horror that unravelled in Spain when an F-16 Greek fighter jet experienced a technical failure on take-off and crashed into pilots and mechanics on the ground.
Nine French and two Greek personnel died and about 20 people were injured Monday after the two-seater F-16, owned by Greece, crashed into parked aircraft at the Los Llanos base in southeastern Spain during a NATO exercise.
Calling the accident "absolutely improbable", French air force chief of staff General Denis Mercier said the F-16 came down "just in the spot where we had planes preparing for take-off, so there was a lot of petrol around."
"According to testimonies that we have started to receive, the image that comes to mind is the film Pearl Harbour," he told reporters, referring to the 2001 Hollywood blockbuster about the surprise Japanese attack on the US airbase in December 1941.
"People were going about their daily business, everything was calm, everyone in their place, at the right place, and then all of a sudden it was horror."
The base, near the city of Albacete, hosts elite exercises run by NATO to train military personnel from 10 nations to carry out joint manoeuvres.
It was the highest death toll in a single day for the French armed forces since an ambush in Afghanistan in which 10 died in 2008.
Nine French personnel and 11 Italians were also injured.
The F-16 hit two Italian AMX planes and three French jets -- a Mirage 2000 and two Alpha Jets -- when it crashed.
Mercier said that many people displayed bravery during the accident.
One pilot, he said, burnt his hands when he rushed to get a mechanic out from under a plane that was on fire, saving his colleague who is seriously burnt but is expected to live.
The mechanics thought about "saving the planes, pushing away the Rafale jets more than saving their own lives," he added.
In one particularly poignant example of luck and misfortune, Gildas Tison, an officer, had sat down early tat the back of one of the Alpha Jets, that was subsequently destroyed, to "look over procedures."
"During that time, the pilot who had also sat down and who forgot his documents left... and there you go," Mercier said. Tison died and the pilot survived.
The F-16's black boxes have been found and are expected to shed more light on what happened, Mercier said.