Brazil plane crash killed family of 10: authorities

SAO PAULO - Ten members of a family died early Sunday when their small plane slammed into a commercial district in the city of Gramado in southern Brazil, civil defense authorities said.

Officials had earlier put the death toll at nine.

The plane, a Piper Cheyenne 400 turboprop, was being flown by a businessman named Luiz Claudio Salgueiro Galeazzi, police confirmed to AFP, and the passengers were all family members of his.

The aircraft crashed shortly after takeoff from the nearby city of Canela, striking the chimney of a building and then a house before falling onto a furniture store, the Rio Grande do Sul state security secretariat said in a statement.

An inn was also damaged, it added.

"There are no survivors of the plane," Cleber dos Santos Lima of the state civil police told AFP.

At least 17 people were injured on the ground, two of them seriously, while several others were treated for smoke inhalation.

The cause of the accident is under investigation.

Gramado is a popular tourist city in Brazil, with a significant influx of visitors during the Christmas season.

Last August, Brazil suffered its worst air tragedy in 17 years, when a twin-engine plane with 62 people aboard crashed in the city of Vinhedo in Sao Paulo state. There were no survivors.

And in one of the country's worst traffic accidents in years, 41 people died in a bus crash Saturday in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

AFP