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Firefighters and police officers work on the spot where a small plane crashed into a building in San Donato Milanese near Milan, Italy. Photo: Flavio Lo Scalzo / Reuters
Giorgio Ispani
Eight people died when a small single-engine airplane with six passengers and a crew of two crashed into an empty office building in the suburbs of the Italian city of Milan.
Investigators have launched an investigation to investigate the cause of the crash of the private plane shortly after it took off from Milan Linate Airport yesterday on its way to Olbia Airport on the Italian island of Sardinia.
A thick dark column of smoke rose from the crash site and was visible for miles. Several cars parked nearby went up in flames.
Firefighters said no one except the On Board was involved in the early afternoon accident near a metro station in San Donato Milanese, a small town near Milan.
Milan prosecutor Tiziana Siciliano said at the scene that the plane had flown normally up to a certain point, then an anomaly appeared on the radar screen and it crashed and hit the roof of the building.
The prosecutor said the plane did not trigger an alarm. It was too early to give a possible cause for the crash, Ms. Siciliano said, adding that the flight recorder had been accessed.
By early evening, only two of the eight dead had been identified from the documents they were carrying, she added.
« All foreigners » were on board, she said, including the pilot, who was Romanian. The aircraft was registered in Romania.
According to Italian news reports, the 30-year-old pilot also had German citizenship. The second person identified was a 60-year-old Romanian who was also a French citizen.
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According to reports, the plane had flown from Bucharest, Romania to Milan on September 30th with no apparent problem.
The Italian news agency Ansa quoted the national aviation safety authority ANSV as saying « The plane hit the building and started to burn ». The aircraft was said to be a PC-12, a single-engine Executive aircraft.
The fire department said earlier that the plane crashed into the facade of the building. But after further investigation, the prosecutor said it was evident that the plane hit the roof.
Firefighters extinguished the flames in the heavily charred and gutted building, which was believed to have been renovated.
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