The wreckage of a plane is seen at a crash site in a suburb of Tokyo.(AP)
Tokyo — A small plane crashed into a quiet neighborhood in Tokyo on Sunday, killing the pilot, a passenger and a woman on the ground, while three people were pulled alive from the wreckage, officials said.
The single-engine propeller plane plowed into and set ablaze a row of houses just minutes after takeoff from an airport used by small aircraft about 500 meters away in Tokyo’s western suburb of Chofu.
Television footage showed a mangled plane, broken up with its tail upside down, resting on a crushed car in a residential lot as dozens of firefighters battled the blaze and treated the victims.
The roofs of the two houses next to the site were also damaged.
Tokyo Fire Department spokesman Teruaki Seki said the dead included the pilot, one of the four passengers and a woman who was inside the house where the plane crashed into, setting it ablaze.
Five others, including the three remaining passengers and two people on the ground, were taken to hospitals, but their conditions were not immediately known.
Police are investigating the cause of the crash.
Minako Akiyama, a resident in the neighborhood, said that after the crash, she heard the loud sound of something being torn.