Rescuers rushed to the scene of a military transport plane crash in mountainous terrain in Algeria and found only one survivor among the dozens of bodies of dead soldiers and their families scattered among the wreckage.

The US-made Lockheed Martin C-130 transport plane had taken took off from Tamanrasset, which lies in Algeria's south and serves as a major military hub, and was on its way to the northeastern city of Constantine.  But it lost altitude somewhere in the mountains of Oum El Bouaghi province, about 250 miles east of the capital, Algiers, and crashed.  The huge aircraft broke into three large sections.  Numerous fragments also litter the mountain. 

A senior Algerian military official Colonel Lahmadi Bouguern said that bad weather, including strong wind gusts, may have contributed the crash.