A civilian aircraft carrying skydivers crashed in the town of Tomblaine in eastern France on Saturday, killing all eleven people on board, local authorities said. The dead included the pilot and ten passengers, among them five students and five instructors at a parachutist school.
According to the BBC, the plane had taken off from Nancy-Essey airfield when it went down. Police urged the public to avoid the area around the airport in the Meurthe-et-Moselle department.
French transport minister Philippe Tabarot said he and interior minister Laurent Nunez were traveling to the scene, calling it a "terrible tragedy."
Yves Seguy, the prefect of Meurthe-et-Moselle, said no bystanders were injured. The crash happened in a built-up area near a shopping center, according to the AFP news agency.
"The plane fell almost vertically, in the immediate vicinity of a housing estate, on the edge of the airfield," Seguy told French broadcaster BFM. He added it was lucky there were no additional victims.
Relatives of those who died were present at the airfield when the crash occurred, local officials said.
Half of the skydivers who died were nurses, according to Thierry Pechey, president of the Meurthe-et-Moselle branch of the Order of Independent Nurses, who spoke to BFM.
