News Digest

Three killed as light aircaft crashes into houses in Tokyo suburb

Three people were killed when a small airplane crashed into a residential area of the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on Sunday. The pilot, a passenger and a woman on the ground died, while three people were pulled alive from the wreckage. The single-engine, five-seater plane plowed into and set ablaze a row of houses shortly after taking off from an airport used by small aircraft about 500m away in Tokyo’s western suburb of Chofu. The mangled plane broke up with its tail upside down, resting on a residential lot where dozens of firefighters battled the blaze and treated the casualties.

I heard a tremendous sound like a truck crashed into a house. When I looked outside from a window, fire was flaring up. The fire was blazing up so hard.

Witness

The propeller-driven aircraft, with a 36-year-old pilot and four passengers on board, was bound for Izuoshima island in the Pacific some 100km (60 miles) south of central Tokyo for a one-day training flight. It crashed at about 11am (2am GMT), setting alight at least three houses and two cars. Flames engulfed one of the houses and the plane’s front fuselage as black smoke rose from the crash site near a school, a baseball stadium and a shopping arcade. “I thought it was flying quite low and then I heard a bang,” said one witness. Another reported: “First, I thought a large truck had crashed into a neighbouring house as I heard the rumbling of the earth. I then saw ferocious smoke.”