A passenger jet takes off as smoke rises from the scene of the crash where a Spanair MD-82 jet bound for Las Palmas in the Canary Islands skidded off the runway and crashed at Madrid's Barajas airport on August 20, 2008. A jetliner heading to the popular Canary Islands vacation resort crashed during takeoff Wednesday, turning a wooded area off the end of a runway into a hellish scene of charred bodies and smoldering wreckage. Some 153 were believed dead. [Agencies]

MADRID, Spain - A jetliner heading to the popular Canary Islands vacation resort crashed during takeoff Wednesday, turning a wooded area off the end of a runway into a hellish scene of charred bodies and smoldering wreckage. Some 153 were believed dead -- Spain's worst air disaster in nearly 25 years.

Only 19 people survived the midafternoon crash of the Spanair MD-82 at Madrid's Barajas International Airport, and some were in critical condition, said Development Minister Magdalena Alvarez, whose department oversees civil aviation in Spain. She initially reported 26 survivors.

Ambulances leave the site where a Spanair jet crashed on takeoff at Madrid airport on Wednesday, August 20, 2008. A Spanish airliner bound for the Canary Islands at the height of the vacation season crashed, burned and broke into pieces Wednesday while trying to take off from Madrid, killing 149 people on board, officials said. [Agencies]

The airline didn't release a death toll, but said the plane carried 172 passengers and crew.

As smoke billowed from the wreckage, dozens of fire trucks and ambulances rushed to help, lining a nearby road and filling a field next to a swath of charred vegetation. Helicopters flew over dumping water on fires.

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