A skydiving plane has crashed in north-eastern France, killing all 11 people on board.
The plane suffered a malfunction and “fell almost vertically” after taking off from the Nancy-Essey airfield on the outskirts of the city of Nancy, the region’s prefect, Yves Seguy, said.
It crashed on the edge of a built-up area near the airfield, he told broadcaster BFM-TV.
“Had it occurred just a few dozen meters away, the accident could have caused collateral casualties,” Mr Seguy, prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle region, said.
The plane belonged to a skydiving club and was taking part in a parachute jump, he said.
The plane banked to the left after it took off and crashed less than a minute later near houses, according to the global flight-tracking service provider Flightradar24.
The dead included five parachuting instructors, five clients and the pilot, according to L’Est Republicain, a local newspaper.
Flight-tracking sites identified the plane as a single-engine Pilatus PC-6, a small transporter of freight, passengers and skydivers.
The parachutists were to have jumped as tandems, Nancy mayor Mathieu Klein told public broadcaster France Info.
Tandem jumps are skydiving experiences where two people, often an instructor and a first-time jumper, are attached together for the descent.
Mr Klein said some of them had families and friends who had come to watch and saw the plane fall from the sky, causing “numerous” victims of psychological trauma.
Emergency services responded immediately and were providing psychological support to several relatives of the victims, Mr Seguy said. Authorities were also collecting witness statements.
“We are deploying all available resources,” he said, including emergency medical teams, fire services, police and mental health support.
A resident, identified as John Curaku by BFM-TV, told the broadcaster that he was in his garden when he heard what sounded like a plane’s engine stopping, immediately followed by a bang.
He said he went to the crash site and “there were no signs of life”, with two of the bodies thrown a few metres from the plane.
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