A plane with 62 people on board crashed in flames in a residential area of a city in the Brazilian state of São Paulo on Friday, the airline said. However, it was not immediately clear how many people were injured or killed.
The airline Voepass confirmed in a statement that a plane bound for Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos international airport with 58 passengers and four crew members on board crashed in the city of Vinhedo. The statement did not provide any information on the cause of the accident.
At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva asked the crowd to stand and observe a minute’s silence as he announced the news. He said it appeared that all passengers and crew on board had died, without elaborating on how he had obtained the information.
Firefighters, military police and the Civil Protection Agency dispatched teams to the crash site in Vinhedo. Authorities sealed off access to the residential area where the plane crashed while journalists waited outside for news.
Brazilian television station GloboNews showed aerial footage of a burning area with smoke rising from the destroyed fuselage. Additional footage from GloboNews earlier showed the plane drifting vertically downwards and spiraling as it fell.
The plane took off from Cascavel in the state of Paraná.
