Emergency crews have begun removing the victims of a plane crash in Brazil's São Paulo state that killed all 62 people aboard, as authorities searched through the wreckage to try to determine what caused the plane's plunge.
Videos showed the ATR 72-500 plane in a downward spin yesterday before it crashed into a residential area of the town of Vinhedo, some 80km northwest of Sao Paulo city.
The Voepass airline said that there were 62 people on board, not 61 as it had reported earlier.
All 62 were Brazilian and there were no survivors.
While some houses at the crash site were damaged, no injuries or deaths were reported among their residents.
The crash transformed the plane's fuselage into a mass of twisted iron.
A steady overnight rain complicated the recovery efforts by some 200 workers, but as of midday, 24 bodies had been removed, Mayor of Vinhedo Dario Pacheco told reporters.
With many victims badly burned, so far only "two bodies have been identified: the pilot and the co-pilot," Mr Pacheco said.
Those who died are being transported to São Paulo's main morgue.
"We estimate that all bodies will have been recovered by day's end," said Carlos Palhares, who heads the federal police's criminology institute.
We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.Manage Preferences
The twin-engine turboprop, built by aviation firm ATR, was on a flight from Cascavel in southern Paraná state to São Paulo's Guarulhos International Airport.
ATR, a joint subsidiary of European giant Airbus and of Italy's Leonardo, said its experts will assist in the investigation.
According to the Flight Radar 24 website, the plane flew for about an hour at 5,180 metres, until at 1:21pm (5:21pm Irish time) it began losing altitude.
Radar contact was lost at 1:22 pm, the Brazilian air force reported.
Brazil's Aeronautical Accidents Investigation and Prevention Center has opened an inquiry into the cause of the crash.
Its investigators recovered the "black box" yesterday, which contains flight data that might be useful in the inquiry.
'No technical problems'
The plane had been in use since 2010 and was in compliance with current standards, the National Civil Aviation Agency said, adding that the four crew members were all fully certified.
Voepass's operations director Marcel Moura said the plane had undergone routine maintenance the night before the accident and that "no technical problems" were found.
But experts suggested that icing of the plane's wings may have been behind the accident.
Mr Moura said the plane was a type that flies at an altitude "where there is a greater sensitivity to icing".
The weather report for yesterday had predicted possible icing but "within acceptable parameters for a flight," Mr Moura said.
The normally peaceful, wooded enclave where the plane came down is filled with police cars, ambulances and firetrucks.
Residents of the neighborhood where the plane fell said they had heard a loud noise and then watched in horror as the plane came down in an almost vertical freefall.
"There was a feeling of panic, of impotence ... something really very sad," 38-year-old Roberta Henrique, who heads the local neighbourhood association, told AFP.
She said that residents were "frightened, psychologically affected".
Military police told local media there were no casualties on the ground.
Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has declared three days of national mourning for what was one of the worst aviation accidents in the country's history.
In 2007, an Airbus A320 of Brazil's TAM Airlines overran a runway at São Paulo's Congonhas Airport and crashed into a warehouse, killing all 187 on board and 12 runway workers.
An Air France A330 on a Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight crashed into the Atlantic, two years later.
All 228 people on board died.
