Three killed after light plane crashes into Tokyo suburb

Three killed, five injured after small airplane crashes into residential area in Tokyo

Three people were killed and a further five were injured when a small airplane crashed into a residential area of the Japanese capital, Tokyo, on Sunday, public broadcaster NHK reported.

The five-seater plane crashed about 11am shortly after it departed Tokyo’s Chofu airport, public broadcaster NHK reported.

Tokyo Fire Department officials said the three suffered heart and lung failures. Five others were taken to hospitals but their conditions were not immediately known.

Television footage showed the plane crashed upside down in the wreckage of a burnt-out house as firefighters and rescue officials scoured the smoking ruins. Several other houses nearby also appeared to be badly damaged.

NHK said two men inside the small plane, which was carrying five people, were killed. A woman who was inside one of the houses was also killed and five people were injured, it said.

"I heard a tremendous sound like a truck crashed into a house... When I looked outside from a window, fire was flaring up," an unidentified woman told NHK.

"The fire was blazing up so hard," she said.

The Tokyo Fire Department said three people were "in cardiopulmonary arrest", a description usually used by officials in Japan until deaths are confirmed by a medical examiner.

Police said the cause of the crash was not immediately known. The neighbourhood is about 500 metres from the airport used by small aircraft.

At least three houses and two cars were on fire in the capital’s residential district of Chofu near the airport, and the crash also damaged the roofs of other houses nearby, according to the spokesman and local media.

A witness told NHK: “I thought it was flying quite low.”