Lima: Seven tourists were killed on Thursday when their light plane crashed on an air tour of the famed Nazca Lines archaeological site in southern Peru, police said.
The Cessna plane carrying three Chilean tourists and four Peruvians crashed near the highway running next to the World Heritage Site, 420 kilometres south of the capital Lima.
The plane, owned by the Nasca Airlines tour company was completely destroyed in the crash, according to witnesses.
The pre-Inca site on Peru's Nazca plateau is only clearly visible from the air, where some 100 drawings of animals are etched in the desert floor, dating up to 2,500 years ago.
The reason why ancient people traced the lines remains one of archaeology's greatest mysteries.
The most common theory is that the drawings were used for rituals, while believers in extraterrestrials have cited them as evidence of alien spacecraft landings.
Five French tourists were killed in April 2008 when their airplane crashed near the Nazca Lines, prompting the French government to encourage against flying on tourists trips in the country -- a recommendation criticised at the time by Lima.
PTI
First Published: Friday, February 26, 2010, 09:26