Five dead as aircraft crashes into Kent house

|PIC1|All five people in a private jet going to France were killed on Sunday when the plane crashed into a housing estate near Farnborough south-east of London, Kent fire brigade said. There were no injuries on the ground.

Police said earlier the twin-engine private jet was carrying two pilots and three passengers. They said it was a miracle that no one on the ground had been killed.

Local residents said the pilot had tried desperately to miss the houses as the plane lost height with its nose up and engines screaming.

"We looked out of the bedroom window and we saw it (the plane) flying really low, as though it was in trouble," Katherine Simnet, a resident of a nearby house, told the BBC.

"It swerved our house. It looked like it was trying to land in the nearby woods, the nearby fields... but it crashed ... and we saw two big balls of black smoke and could smell the air fuel."

She said she thought the residents of the house were on holiday.

Ambulance services said two people had been taken to the nearby Princess Royal University Hospital suffering from shock. A spokeswoman said they had not been involved in the crash.

"There are no reports of any fatalities on the ground, just some minor injuries, nothing serious," a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

One building on the quiet housing estate, believed to have been a garage, was burned down and the roof and top storey of a house next door had been badly damaged.

Nearby Biggin Hill airfield said the Cessna Citation, a short-haul jet, had just taken off when the pilot made an emergency call reporting difficulties and asking for permission to land again.

It "unfortunately crashed before reaching the airport," the airfield said in a statement. An airfield official who did not wish to be identified said the jet had been heading to France.