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The dead included five parachuting instructors, five novice
jumpers and the pilot, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said.
Transport Minister Philippe Tabarot said it was France's biggest
aviation accident involving skydiving in about 30 years.
“Some of the victims’ families witnessed the aircraft falling
with their own eyes. So there is tremendous emotion and an even
greater psychological trauma," Nunez said.
He refused to speculate on what caused the crash but said the
plane dropped out of the sky suddenly. He said it had just taken
off from the Nancy-Essey airfield on the outskirts of the city
of Nancy when it came down about 300 meters (yards) from the
runway.
Yves Séguy, prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle region, said the
plane suffered a malfunction and “fell almost vertically,"
narrowly missing a built-up area.
“Had it occurred just a few dozen meters away, the accident
could have caused collateral casualties,” he said.
The plane banked to the left after takeoff and crashed less than
a minute later near houses, according to the flight tracking
service Flightradar24.
Police cordoned off the crumpled wreckage.
Flight tracking sites identified the plane as a single-engine
Pilatus PC-6, a small transporter of freight, passengers and
skydivers.
The parachutists were to have jumped as tandems, Nancy Mayor
Mathieu Klein told public broadcaster France Info. Tandem jumps
are skydiving experiences where two people, often an instructor
and a novice jumper, are attached together for the descent.
Emergency services responded immediately and were providing
psychological support to victims' relatives, officials said. The
Paris prosecutor's office is leading the crash probe, Nunez
said.
A resident, identified as John Curaku by BFM-TV, told the
broadcaster that he was in his yard when he heard what sounded
like a plane's engine stopping, immediately followed by a bang.
He said he went to the crash site and “there were no signs of
life,” with two of the bodies thrown a few meters (yards) from
the plane.
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Leicester reported from Paris and Hatton from Lisbon, Portugal.
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