Five die as light aircraft crashes in Portugal

A small airplane crashed near a supermarket in a residential area outside Lisbon on Monday, killing four people on board and one on ground.

Firefighters at the site of the crash.
TRT World and Agencies

Firefighters at the site of the crash.

Five people died when a Swiss-registered light aircraft crashed into a supermarket warehouse in the Lisbon suburbs on Monday, rescue services said.

The fatalities comprised the pilot and all three passengers — a Swiss and three French nationals — who were aboard the aircraft, plus a man who was at the warehouse at the time, they said in a statement.

Three other people were slightly injured.

The warehouse, operated by the Lidl supermarket chain, is located about a kilometre (half a mile) from an aerodrome at Tires, in the district of Cascais about 20 kilometres (12 miles) from central Lisbon.

The twin-engine Piper PA-31 plane had just taken off on a flight to the southern French city of Marseille when it crashed, hitting a truck parked at the warehouse.

About 90 firefighters mobilised to fight a blaze, which was quickly put out. A neighbouring house was also damaged.

The aerodrome issued a statement saying that the plane belonged to Symbios Orthopaedics, a company based near Lausanne, Switzerland that specialises in orthopaedic prosthetics.

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