10 die as plane crashes into house near Delhi

FARIDABAD: Ten people were killed when a small plane carrying a patient to hospital crashed into a house near the Indian capital New Delhi, police said Thursday.

All seven people on board died, along with three women living in the house, when the single-propeller plane came down in a heavily populated neighbourhood of Faridabad town.

The privately-chartered plane was being used as an air ambulance to carry a young male patient on Wednesday night from the eastern city of Patna to a New Delhi hospital, local media reports said.

"Seven people on board were killed and three women who were living in the house are reported by the hospital to be dead," P.K. Agarwal, the police commissioner of Faridabad, told AFP by telephone.

Faridabad is a congested satellite town 22 kilometres (14 miles) outside Delhi which has grown rapidly in recent years.

Agarwal said preliminary investigations suggested that the plane lost control at about 8,000 feet (2,500 metres) during bad weather before plunging to the ground.

Two houses were badly damaged by the falling plane, and crash investigators on Thursday were at the scene to inspect the mangled remains of the aircraft which were scattered in a narrow lane and courtyard.

"I woke up to a loud bang. We thought it was a bomb blast and ran out of our houses," Hanuman Singh, who lives nearby, told the NDTV news channel.

The Press Trust of India said two doctors were on the plane, which was carrying the hepatitis patient to a Delhi hospital after he slipped in coma during treatment in Patna. The man was described as a student.

Rescue operations during the night were hampered by large crowds that packed streets around the crash site, police said, adding three other people on the ground were injured.

Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011