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Article snippet: ATLANTA — At least 16 people were believed dead after a military plane crashed in the Mississippi Delta on Monday, prompting an urgent rescue effort in one of the South’s most rural regions, the authorities said. Fred Randle, the emergency management director in Leflore County, Miss., said in a brief interview late Monday that officials thought at least 16 people had died in the crash. The fire chief in Greenwood, Marcus Banks, said only that there were “multiple fatalities” in the episode, which occurred around 4 p.m. in Leflore County, about two hours north of Jackson. A Marine Corps spokeswoman at the Pentagon, Capt. Sarah Burns, said that one of the service’s KC-130 aircraft had “experienced a mishap.” The Marines, who use KC-130s for aerial refueling, did not immediately provide any additional information, including the plane’s scheduled route. The cause of the crash, in an unincorporated part of Leflore County, was not immediately clear, but Chief Banks said witnesses described the plane as disintegrating in the air as it neared the ground. The chief estimated that the debris field was about three miles in diameter. The chief, who said the Fire Department used about 9,000 gallons of foam to extinguish a blaze, said he believed the cockpit and fuselage had fallen about a mile from one of the plane’s wings. Edna Beavers was trimming the grass outside her house in Itta Bena, Miss., on Monday afternoon when, she said, she glanced up and saw a huge plume of blac... Link to the full article to read more