Army plane crashes into apartment building in Ecuador

Quito: A small army plane has slammed into an apartment building in an upscale neighborhood of Ecuador's mountainous capital, 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 black smoke into the Thursday evening sky and filling a residential yard with the aircraft's wreckage.

Quito fire chief Atahualpa Sanchez said emergency crews recovered the victims' badly burned bodies, while rescuers evacuated an unspecified number of injured people in stable condition.

The army said three soldiers on the plane died. In a statement, it said the pilot's wife and son were also killed.

The Red Cross reported that two people on the ground died.