Brazil‘s presidential election campaign was thrown into uncertainty on Wednesday when a private jet carrying the socialist party candidate, Eduardo Campos crashed into a residential area near São Paulo.
Campos and the six other crew and passengers were killed in the accident, which occurred in bad weather as the Cessna plane was preparing to land.
The deaths prompted a wave of mourning across the country, which is likely to be followed by speculation about the effect on the presidential vote on 5 October.
Campos, a former Pernambuco governor with a business-friendly reputation, had shaken the political world by choosing environmentalist Marina Silva as his running mate.
The unlikely couple were in third place in the closely fought race to run Latin America’s most populous and economically powerful nation. Silva – who was runner-up to Dilma Rousseff in the last election in 2010 – is now widely expected to head the campaign, though she has yet to comment.
Silva heard the news as she was recording a TV programme and immediately left the studio.
Her political party, the Sustainability Network, said she was on her way to the crash site and expressed condolences on Twitter. “We are all shocked by the death of Eduardo Campos in the plane crash this morning,” it said.
Other members of the campaign were on their way to the site. “We’re stunned. It seems that there are no survivors … An irreparable loss,” representative Julio Delgado told local media.
The plane came down in an urban area and crashed into a gymnasium in dense residential area. Images from the scene show smoke rising from a building and crowds with umbrellas watching as firemen entered the site.
The number of casualties has yet to be confirmed. Six other people, including a press manager, a journalist and an official photographer, were on board the jet. Reporters said they found election material among the wreckage.
