Patrol boats have recovered 17 bodies in the area where a Cuban airliner carrying 44 people on a domestic flight crashed into the Caribbean, officials in Havana reported Saturday.

Cubana de Aviacion spokesmen said a Soviet-made Antonov 24 turboprop plane crashed into deep water two to three miles south of the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba about 9:55 p.m. Friday, three minutes after it had taken off on a 500-mile flight to Havana.

Airline officials said they had no information on possible causes of the crash, but said it would be investigated by Cuba's civil aviation agency.

There was no sign of survivors among the 39 passengers and five crew members on Flight 787, airline officials announced. Six of the passengers were from Spain and two from Brazil.

The Spanish news agency EFE identified the Spanish victims as Pedro Miguel Rodriguez, Jose Beltran, Juan Alvarez, Maria Rosa Coll, Francisco Garrigos and Carmen Padillo.

The head of the municipal government in Santiago de Cuba, Luis Estruch, told Cuban state television that searchers had worked all night to recover bodies.

``We are making a very strong effort because the accident happened in a very inaccessible area because it is very deep,'' Estruch said.

Early Saturday, a few people waited at the Havana airport for word on those aboard the flight, but airport officials refused to speak to reporters.

Cuban ships, planes, helicopters and divers searched calm seas off the coast throughout the day, but by late Saturday afternoon there was no report that the wreckage of the plane had been located.

Plane no longer made

The AN-24 is a twin-engine turboprop that seats about 50 people and is usually deployed on short commercial routes. It was once regarded as the hardy workhorse of the Soviet fleet, capable of landing on short and even dirt fields, but none have been manufactured since 1978.

Cubana de Aviacion's fleet has suffered greatly since the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, and visitors landing at Havana's Jose Marti Airport can see long rows of Soviet-made jetliners whose engines appear to have been cannibalized to keep others flying.

Cuba has several modern Western-made jetliners, but usually reserves them for flights to Europe and Canada. Its fleet of Soviet planes usually covers domestic and Latin American routes.

Other fatal crashes

Cubana has had at least two other fatal crashes in the past eight years.

A Cubana jetliner on an inaugural flight to Puerto Plata, a resort on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic, slammed into a mountain in 1992, killing all 35 people aboard.

And in 1989, all 126 people aboard a Soviet-made Ilyushin jetliner, most of them Italian tourists, died when the plane crashed near the Havana airport.

Copyright © 1997 The Miami Herald