Five parachutists die in Australian plane crash

Five people on a skydiving flight in Australia were killed when their light plane crashed into a dam and sank shortly after takeoff in the northern state of Queensland, police said yesterday. A spokesman for Queensland police said the pilot as well as...

Five people on a skydiving flight in Australia were killed when their light plane crashed into a dam and sank shortly after takeoff in the northern state of Queensland, police said yesterday.

A spokesman for Queensland police said the pilot as well as a women passenger survived the crash.

Police said the crash happened shortly after the Cessna 206 aircraft took off near Ipswich, west of the Queensland capital of Brisbane. Witnesses said the plane clipped a tree as it struggled to gain altitude.

"The aircraft seemed to develop trouble trying to gain some height," Queensland Police Inspector Noel Powers told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio.

The crash is Australia's worst plane disaster since 15 people were killed when their Metroliner aircraft crashed into a hillside in far north Queensland on May 7, last year.

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