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At least ten people died and nine were injured when a plane from the Swiss company Crossair with 33 people on board crashed near Zurich airport on a flight from Berlin.
Police at the wintry crash scene near the town of Birchwil, just a few kilometres from the runway, said at least nine people had so far been found alive.
Rescuers said they feared others could be wandering dazed in the dark in surrounding woodland and fields.
"At least 10 bodies had been recovered," police spokesman Hans Baltensberger told the Reuters press agency.
"We're still assuming there are other injured people walking around the woods. At first daylight, we're going in with the army to search for them," he added.
There was no immediate word on the victims' nationalities.
Dozens of emergency workers with search lights and dogs were already combing the woods for possible survivors in the early hours of Sunday.
The four-engined jet, operated by Crossair, was on an instrument landing approach when it crashed just minutes before reaching Zurich airport.
"We lost the aircraft from our radar screens three kilometres before it was to touch down," airport spokesman Josef Felder told a news briefing.
There was no word on the cause of the crash but the police spokesman said there was no indication the plane had been attacked.
"That is something that would seem at the moment to be quite unlikely," Baltensberger said.
The plane's two black boxes were found within little more of an hour of the crash and were checked for any clues as to what might have caused the crash, officials said.
Wings broken off
The weather was poor at the time of the crash, and the area where the plane went down was covered in light snow.
A spokesman for the airline said the 97-seat RJ-100 Avro Jumbolino, built by BAE Systems, formerly known as British Aerospace, was carrying 28 passengers and five crew.
A Reuters reporter at the scene said the fuselage appeared largely intact, even though the cockpit and both wings had broken off.
"I saw the plane in the air and there were no indications of any problems. It only started to burn after it had hit the ground," Swiss television quoted an eyewitness as saying.
Crossair said the plane had been in service since 1996 and logged more than 13,000 flight hours.
Chief executive Andre Dose declined to comment on speculation that the plane came in too low before crashing into the woods. He said the Swiss pilot was an old hand with years of experience on this particular aircraft.
"I just can't say anything about the causes," he said. "Our thoughts are with the families of the victims."
Dose declined to speculate what impact the crash, the company's second in just under two years, would have on Crossair as it steps up from regional airline to national flag carrier after the collapse of Swissair under a mountain of debt.
"This really is a lot to take in this difficult time," Crossair president Moritz Suter told the news briefing.
Crossair, still struggling to gain customer confidence in an industry devastated by the September 11 attacks, is planning to assume most of Swissair's flight operations next year.
A Crossair plane crashed on January 10, 2000, shortly after taking off from Zurich for Dresden. All 10 aboard were killed.
© Reuters
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