At least 16 dead as military plane crashes in US
At least 16 people have died in a US military plane crash in rural Mississippi , with the local governor describing the incident as a "tragedy".
No official details are immediately available on the circumstances of the crash, which happened in northern Mississippi's LeFlore County, about 160 kilometres north of Jackson, the state capital, on Monday evening.
Captain Sarah Burns, a spokeswoman for the Marine Corps, said only that a US Marines KC-130 Hercules transport aircraft had "experienced a mishap," with news media initially reporting five confirmed deaths.
Several hours later, Fred Randle, LeFlore County director of emergency management, told Reuters that at least 16 people had perished. Randle gave no further details of the incident.
The incident was a "tragedy", Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant said in a statement on social media site Facebook, but provided no details.
Images posted online by news organisations showed the crumpled wreckage of a plane engulfed in flames in a field surrounded by tall vegetation, with a large plume of smoke in the sky above the crash site.
It is believed that the flight originated from Cherry Point, North Carolina, where a Marine Corps air base is located.
An FBI spokesman Brett Carr told the New York Times that the agency was sending officials to the scene, but authorities did not believe foul play was involved.
"We’re just trying to offer any type of assistance," Carr, a spokesman for the bureau’s Jackson, Mississippi office, told the newspaper.
"It could be anything from manpower to evidence response."
