Four British tourists were killed in a light aircraft crash near Peru's Nazca Lines, police said today.

The three men and a woman were killed along with the Peruvian pilot and co-pilot when the Cessna, which had engine trouble, crashed in a field.

The plane crashed after taking off from the local Maria Reiche airport at about 11.15pm British time yesterday.

It hit the field as the crew was apparently trying to make an emergency landing, police said.

Nazca police chief Alfredo Coronel said officers were working to recover the bodies.

An official who answered the phone at the British embassy in Lima declined to comment without authorisation from London.

The Nazca Lines, mysterious geoglyphs etched into the desert centuries ago by indigenous groups, are a Unesco World Heritage Site and one of Peru's leading tourist attractions.

About 240 miles south east of the capital Lima, the glyphs are only fully recognisable from the air and 30-minute overflights are popular with travellers.

However, there have been allegations of lax supervision of the several-dozen ageing planes that make the flights.

In February, a Cessna 206 carrying three Chileans and four Peruvians over the lines crashed and killed everyone on board.

Another crash in April 2008 killed five French tourists, though their pilot survived.

The UK Foreign Office said it was "urgently investigating" the report of the crash.