NINE people have been killed after a plane carrying sky divers crashed in Sweden.
Paramedics rushed to the scene of the incident at Örebro Airport at around 7.20pm on Thursday.
And just hours later, Swedish police confirmed nine passengers had been killed.
They said: “A total of nine people died in the accident.”
Officers said the plane was carrying nine people, including a pilot and eight parachutists.
Emil Gustavsson, rescue leader at the Joint Rescue Co-Ordination Centre, told local TT news agency: “It is a sky diver plane that has crashed after takeoff.”
Local media said the plane caught fire after crashing, but the blaze was quickly extinguished.
Emergency services – including ten ambulances – rushed to the scene, according to reports.
Rescue services located the aircraft alongside one of the runways, Carl-Johan Linde, spokesman for the Swedish Maritime Authority said.
The cause of the accident is not yet known.
Örebro is the sixth-largest city in Sweden, with about 124,000 inhabitants.
Sky diving courses regularly take place in the city during the summer months – with a popular parachute club based in Örebro.
The city’s airport is the fourth-largest cargo airport in Sweden.
In 2019, a tourist plane carrying nine people crashed into a Swedish river, killing all passengers.
Horrified eyewitnesses told how they heard a loud “bang” before the plane plunged into a river outside Umea during a skydiving trip.
Authorities said the passengers were skydivers and some witnesses told Swedish media they saw parachutists trying to jump off the plane just before the crash.
