Ten members of a family have died after a private plane crashed into the city of Gramado in southern Brazil.
The small plane crashed into a tourist hotspot, killing all 10 people on board and injuring more than a dozen people on the ground, officials have said.
The twin-engine Piper PA-42-1000 hit the chimney of a home and the second floor of a different house before crashing into a shop in a largely residential neighbourhood of Gramado shortly after takeoff from Canela, Brazil’s Civil Defence agency said on Sunday.
Rio Grande do Sul Governor Eduardo Leite told a news conference that the aircraft’s owner and pilot, Luiz Claudio Galeazzi, was killed along with nine members of his family.
Leite said that 17 people on the ground were injured, 12 of whom were still receiving treatment in the hospital.
Galeazzi’s company, Galeazzi & Associados, confirmed that its CEO and Galeazzi’s wife and three daughters had died in the crash.
Gramado, located in the Serra Gaucha mountains, is a popular destination for vacationers, especially during the Christmas season.
State governor Mr. Leite said the cause of the accident was being investigated by the Aeronautical Accident Investigation and Prevention Centre (Cenipa).
The region was severely hit in May this year by unprecedented flooding, which claimed dozens of lives and displaced around 150,000 people from their homes.
The crash comes a little more than a year after Brazil suffered its worst air disaster in nearly two decades when a twin-engine plane crashed in the southeastern city of Vinhedo, killing all 62 people on board.