Indonesia military plane crashes into houses, kills six

"Six out of the seven crew were killed and one was critically injured," air force spokesman Asman Yunus told AFP, adding that the surviving crew member was in hospital.

Military spokesman Iskandar Sitompul said: "Four people on the ground have also been taken to hospital and are in intensive care."

The Fokker-27 crashed into the housing complex in the Halim Perdanakusuma military airport compound at 2:45 pm (0745 GMT) after taking off from the same airport at 1:10 pm.

"The aircraft was conducting training and there were no passengers aboard," said Yunus, who also told Metro TV that the plane crashed on eight houses.

An AFP correspondent at Halim said fire fighters on dozens of trucks extinguished a blaze that ripped through homes creating a thick cloud of smoke, and that the plane's wing appeared to be sticking out from the roof of a house.

Yunus said the military would look into the cause of the crash. The Fokker-27 was more than 20 years old, Sitompul said.

Indonesia is in the process of updating its ageing military aircraft and equipment, procuring Russian and American warplanes, boats for its navy and parts for its transport planes.

The sprawling archipelago relies heavily on air transport but has one of the world's poorest aviation safety records, and military aircraft crashes are relatively common.

In early May, a Russian Sukhoi jet on a promotional demonstration flight slammed into a dormant volcano in Java, killing all 45 aboard.

A New Zealand pilot and two Indonesians were killed in March after a helicopter chartered by the Indonesian arm of US mining company Freeport-McMoRan crashed in remote Papua province.