A small army plane slammed into an apartment building in an upscale neighbourhood of Ecuadors mountainous capital on Thursday, killing five people aboard the aircraft and two more on the ground. The plane grazed a house before plowing into the four-story building, sending a fireball and black smoke into the evening sky and filling a residential yard with the aircrafts wreckage.
A thick mist shrouded the neighbourhood at the time, though the cause of the crash was unknown. The army said three soldiers on the plane died: the pilot, a major; the co-pilot, a lieutenant; and the mechanic. In a statement, it said the pilots wife and son were also killed. The Red Cross reported that two more people on the ground died, including a woman identified as Elena Reascos, the mother of a 9-year-old boy.