The wreckage of a Colombian airplane is seen after it crashed in the area of Machiques 400 miles (650 kilometers) west of Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday Aug. 16, 2005. All passengers died in the Colombian chartered jet carrying vacationers home from Panama to the French Caribbean island of Martinique.

Rescue workers search for the bodies of passengers who died in a West Caribbean Airways passenger plane that crashed with 160 people on board in the Sierra de Perija area near Machiques in western Venezuela, Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2005. All passengers died in the Colombian chartered jet carrying vacationers home from Panama to the French Caribbean island of Martinique.

France's civil aviation authority announced Tuesday (Aug 16) that all 153 passengers killed in a Colombian jetliner crash in western Venezuela earlier in the day were French citizens and none survived.

"According to our information, the 153 passengers were from Martinique," said a spokesman of French authorities in Martinique and the General Directorate for Civil Aviation (DGAC) in Paris.

Colombian officials said earlier that the West Caribbean Airways plane, flying from Panama to Martinique, had been carrying 152 passengers and an eight-person Colombian crew.

This undated file photo shows a McDonnell Douglas MD-82 airliner.

According to the Martinique tour company which had chartered the MD-82 aircraft, Globe Trotters, the victims were returning to their homes on the Caribbean island of Martinique after a week-long vacation in Panama.

France's air accident investigation office was sending three people to Venezuela and two to Martinique to investigate the causes of the crash.

In a statement, French President Jacques Chirac expressed his condolences and profound compassion to the families of the victims and to those close to them in the name of all French people.

Colonized by France in 1635 and officially annexed by the King of France in 1674, Martinique has subsequently remained a French possession except for three brief periods of foreign occupation. In 1946, the island became a Department of France and in 1974 a Region of France.

Editor: Yan