Plane crashes, two dead in Cyprus

NICOSIA - A Cypriot army plane crashed into a house on the island on Saturday after clipping the bell tower of a packed church and narrowly missing a 13th century Crusaders' castle, police said.

The two pilots of the single-engine PC-9 trainer were killed on impact but no one was in the home, authorities said.

Witnesses said the plane plunged into the garage of a British-owned home in Kolossi, a community lying some 5km east of the British air force base of Akrotiri. Kolossi is a community of some 2000 Britons, Germans and Cypriots.

The aircraft had circled over Kolossi three times in obvious difficulty and clipped the bell tower of a church holding a memorial service before crashing, witnesses said.

"People were scared stiff," a German resident of Kolossi told Reuters. "We saw it circling over Kolossi and it hit the bell tower of the church with its wing before losing more height and crashing."

- REUTERS