HAVANA — Stepping into history, President Barack Obama opened an extraordinary visit to Cuba on Sunday, eager to push decades of acrimony deeper into the past and forge irreversible ties with America's former adversary.

"This is a historic visit and a historic opportunity," Obama said as he greeted staff of the new U.S. Embassy in Havana.

Air Force One touched down on a rainy, overcast day in the Cuban capital. The president was joined by wife Michelle Obama and daughters Malia and Sasha.

Obama was greeted by top Cuban officials — but not President Raul Castro. The Cuban leader frequently greets major world figures upon their arrival at Jose Marti International Airport, but was absent on the tarmac. Instead, he planned to greet Obama on Monday at the Palace of the Revolution.

Obama's whirlwind trip is a crowning moment in his and Castro's ambitious effort to restore normal relations between their countries. While deep differences persist, the economic and political relationship has changed rapidly in the 15 months since the leaders vowed a new beginning.

After greeting embassy staff, Obama and his family toured Old Havana by foot, despite a heavy downpour. They walked gingerly on the slippery wet stones in the square in front of the Havana Cathedral. A few hundred people gathered in the square erupted in applause and shouted Obama's name as the first family stepped forward.

Under a balcony decorated with Cuban and US flags, Cuban police arrive to the area where President Barack Obama will visit upon arrival in Old Havana, Cuba, Sunday, March 20, 2016. Photo: Ramon Espinosa / Associated Press

The Obamas then dined at a privately-owned restaurant in a bustling, working class neighborhood. Jubilant crowds surged toward the president's heavily fortified motorcade as it inched through the San Cristobal restaurant.

For more than 50 years, Cuba was an unimaginable destination for a U.S. president, as well as most American citizens. The U.S. severed diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961 after Fidel Castro's revolution sparked fears of communism spreading to the Western Hemisphere. Domestic politics in both countries contributed to the continued estrangement well after the Cold War ended.

"He wanted to come to Cuba with all his heart," 79-year-old Odilia Collazo said in Spanish as she watched Obama's arrival live on state television. "Let God will that this is good for all Cubans. It seems to me that Obama wants to do something good before he leaves."

Ahead of Obama's arrival, counter-protesters and police broke up an anti-government demonstration by the Ladies in White group, whose members were taken into custody by female police officers in a scene that plays out in Havana each Sunday. They're typically detained briefly and then released.

Policewomen drag away a member of Ladies in White, a women's dissident group that calls for the release of political prisoners, during their weekly protest in Havana, Cuba, Sunday, March 20, 2016. Photo: Rebecca Blackwell /Associated Press

Obama's visit was highly anticipated in Cuba, where workers furiously cleaned up the streets in Old Havana and gave buildings a fresh coat of paint ahead of his arrival. American flags were raised alongside the Cuban colors in parts of the capital, an improbable image for those who have lived through a half-century of bitterness between the two countries.

Many Cubans stayed home in order to avoid extensive closures of main boulevards. The city's seaside Malecon promenade was largely deserted Sunday morning except for a few cars, joggers, fishermen and pelicans.

The president's schedule in Cuba is jam-packed, including an event with U.S. and Cuban entrepreneurs. But much of Obama's visit was about appealing directly to the Cuban people and celebrating the island's vibrant culture.

"I don't think that the Cuban people are going to be bewitched by North American culture," Gustavo Machin, Cuba's deputy director of U.S. affairs, told The Associated Press. "We don't fear ties with the United States."

A highlight of Obama's visit comes Tuesday when he joins Castro and a crowd of baseball-crazed Cubans for a game between the beloved national team and Major League Baseball's Tampa Bay Rays. The president also planned a speech at the Grand Theater of Havana laying out his vision for greater freedoms and more economic opportunity in Cuba.

Two years after taking power in 2008, Castro launched economic and social reforms that appear slow-moving to many Cubans and foreigners, but are lasting and widespread within Cuban society. The changes have allowed hundreds of thousands of people to work in the private sector and have relaxed limits on cellphones, Internet and Cubans' comfort with discussing their country's problems in public, for example.

The Cuban government has been unyielding, however, on making changes to its single-party political system and to the strict limits on media, public speech, assembly and dissent.

Obama will spend some time talking with Cuban dissidents. The White House said such a meeting was a prerequisite for the visit. But there were no expectations that he would leave Cuba with significant pledges from the government to address Washington's human rights concerns.

A major focus for Obama was pushing his Cuba policy to the point it will be all but impossible for the next president to reverse it. That includes highlighting new business deals by American companies, including hotel chains Starwood and Marriott and online lodging service Airbnb.

Story: Julie Pace and Michael Weissenstein, Associated Press

JAKARTA, Indonesia — An Indonesian military helicopter crashed and burst into flames Sunday during a mission to capture the country's most wanted militant, killing at least 12 people on board.

The Bell 412-EP helicopter was carrying 13 soldiers and crew when it went down about 35 minutes after taking off from Poso district's Watutau village, said Maj. Gen. Agus Surya Bakti, the regional military chief overseeing South and Central Sulawesi provinces.

He said rescuers spotted the wreckage of the burning helicopter in a remote area of neighboring Kasiguncu village. They rushed to the scene and pulled 12 bodies from the debris, including a district military chief.

Rescuers were searching for a missing soldier who was aboard the helicopter.

Agus said it was not yet known what caused the 3-year-old helicopter to crash, though thunderstorms were thought to have played a part.

More than 2,500 security forces, including elite army troops, have intensified their operations this year in Poso, a mountainous district of Central Sulawesi province considered an extremist hotbed, to try to capture Indonesia's most wanted militant, Abu Wardah Santoso. He leads the East Indonesia Mujahidin network, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group.

At least five members of the network were killed by security forces this past week. Members of the group are thought to be hiding in Poso, where more than 1,000 people died in 2001 and 2002 in violence between Christians and Muslims.

Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago nation of about 250 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, including plane and train crashes and ferry sinkings.

Story: Associated Press

MOSCOW — An airliner carrying 62 people from Dubai crashed early Saturday while landing in the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don in strong winds, killing all aboard, Russian officials said.

A list published by the Emergencies Ministry showed the 737-800 was carrying 55 passengers and seven crew members, whose nationalities were not immediately confirmed. Igor Oder, head of the Emergencies Ministry's southern regional operations, said in a televised briefing that all had been killed.

The plane belonged to the budget carrier FlyDubai.

In a statement, the budget carrier confirmed that flight FZ981 crashed on landing and said that there are fatalities.

"We are doing all we can to gather information as quickly as possible. At this moment our thoughts and prayers are with our passengers and our crew who were on board the aircraft," the airline said.

Vasily Golubev, the governor of the Rostov region some 950 kilometers south of Moscow, was quoted by Russian news agencies as telling local journalists that the plane crashed about 250 meters short of the runway. News reports said the plane caught fire after the crash.

The cause of the crash was not immediately determined, but Golubev said: "By all appearances, the cause of the air crash was the strongly gusting wind, approaching a hurricane level."

State news agency Tass said weather data from the area indicated that winds were anywhere from 14 to 22 meters per second (30-50 miles per hour) at the time of the crash and that there was light rain.

Ian Petchenik, a spokesman for the flight-tracking website Flightradar24, told The Associated Press that the plane missed approach then entered a holding pattern and tried to land again before contact was lost.

On Oct. 31, a Russian airliner blew up in the air over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, killing all 224 aboard. Investigators determined it was destroyed by a bomb onboard.

Russian news reports said most of those aboard were Russian tourists but there were unspecified foreigners aboard as well.

FlyDubai is a budget airline launched in 2008 by the government of Dubai, the Gulf commercial hub that is part of the seven-state United Arab Emirates federation. Its first flight took to the skies in 2009.

It shares a chairman with Dubai's government-backed Emirates, the Middle East's biggest airline, though the two carriers operate independently and maintain separate operations from their bases at Dubai International Airport, the region's busiest airport.

FlyDubai's fleet is dominated by relatively young 737-800 aircraft, the same model as the one that crashed. The airline says it operates more than 1,400 flights a week.

The airline has expanded rapidly in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. Dubai is a popular tourist destination for Russian visitors, who are attracted by its beaches, shopping malls and year-round sunshine. Like other nationalities, many Russian expatriates live and work in Dubai, a city where foreigners outnumber locals more than 4-to-1.

It has been flying to the southern city of Rostov-on-Don since 2013.

FlyDubai has a good safety record. In January 2015, one of its planes was struck on the fuselage by what appeared to small-arms fire shortly before it landed in Baghdad. That flight landed safely with no major injuries reported.

To reach us about this article or another matter, please contact us by e-mail at: [email protected].

Follow @KhaosodEnglish