Investigators in Mexico say they have found no indication of sabotage or foul play in last night's plane crash that killed the country's interior minister.
Juan Camilo Mourino, President Felipe Calderon's right-hand man and the number two in his government, died yesterday when a small government plane crashed in Mexico City, killing all eight aboard.
Five people on the ground were also killed. The plane narrowly missed high-rise office buildings full of workers.
Communications Minister Luis Tellez said there was no evidence of a mid-air explosion and there were no emergency calls from the pilot flying the Learjet plane.
'So far, we have not detected any indications that suggest a hypothesis other than that it was an accident,' he said, adding however that nothing was being ruled out.
Small plane crashes are relatively common in Mexico and Central America. In 2006, a helicopter crashed in almost exactly the same spot as yesterday's accident.
El Universal daily cited air traffic controllers as saying Mr Mourino's plane was flying too close to a Boeing 767 and turbulence from its wake could have caused the accident.
Minister a key figure in drugs war
Mr Mourino, a US-trained economist and a skilled former lawmaker, was appointed interior minister in January, taking charge of internal security a year into Mr Calderon's bloody, army-led battle against powerful drug cartels.
The 37-year-old, who was married with three children, was a rising star in Mexican politics who helped engineer conservative Mr Calderon's 2006 election victory against a leftist popular with many in poorer parts of the country.
Jose Luis Santiago Vasconcelos, the deputy attorney general until recently and a key figure in the drug war under Mr Calderon and previous administrations, also died in the crash.
Mexico has been tense ever since drug gangs appeared to take their feud with the government to a new level in September when a grenade was lobbed into a crowd celebrating a national holiday in Calderon's home city. Authorities have charged three men with carrying out the attack for the Gulf cartel.
More than 4,000 people have been killed this year, mainly drug traffickers but also police and soldiers, by drug gang hitmen lashing back at the army and fighting turf wars.
The Learjet smashed into evening rush-hour traffic between office buildings in an upscale business district, setting a row of cars ablaze. Office workers said they heard the plane plummet past them and slam into the ground.
A plane crash expert said at the scene yesterday it seemed something happened to the plane in the air and it nosedived into the ground, given minimal damage to nearby buildings.
Mr Tellez told a news conference Mexican investigators, along with experts from Britain and the US, would carry out a meticulous and detailed inquiry that could take weeks.
'What we know is that the airplane crashed into the ground and it was on the ground that the explosion happened,' he said.
Mexico City Attorney General Miguel Angel Mancera told Mexican television that 13 other people were injured, some with serious burns.
Mexico's peso weakened sharply to nearly 13 to the US dollar in Asian trading on news of the crash, brokerage Brown Brothers Harriman said, but it pared losses and stabilized at 12.56 in Mexico trade, 0.16% weaker than yesterday's close.
