AFP, Bogotá

An airplane carrying 15 people, including a lawmaker, crashed near Colombia’s border with Venezuela on Wednesday, killing all passengers and crew, Colombia’s civil aviation authority said.

The plane, which was operated by state airline Satena, took off from the border city of Cucuta and lost contact with control towers shortly before it was due to land in nearby Ocana around noon.

“There are no survivors,” an official from the aviation authority told AFP. There were 13 passengers and two crew members aboard. The Cucuta area is mountainous with changeable weather and swaths are controlled by largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army.

The government deployed the Air Force to search for the plane and recover the bodies. One lawmaker and one legislative candidate are feared to have been aboard.

“We have received with concern the information about the air accident... where my colleague Diogenes Quintero, Carlos Salcedo and their teams were traveling,” local parliamentarian Wilmer Carrillo said.