A Brazilian plane crashed in Sao Paulo state, killing all 61 people on board, the airline said.

VINEDO, Brazil (AP) — A passenger plane crashed into a gated residential complex in Brazil’s Sao Paulo state on Friday, killing all 61 people on board, officials and the airline said.

Officials did not say whether anyone was killed on the ground in the neighborhood where the plane landed in the city of Vinhedo, about 80 kilometers (50 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo. But witnesses at the scene said there were no casualties among local residents.

The airline Voipas said its ATR 72 twin-turboprop plane was bound for Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 57 passengers and four crew members on board when it crashed in Vinhedo. The airline provided a flight manifest with the names of the passengers but not their nationalities. An earlier statement had given the number of passengers at 58.

“The company regrets to announce that all 61 people on board Flight 2283 died at the scene of the accident. At this time, Vobas’ priority is to provide unrestricted assistance to the families of the victims and to actively cooperate with the authorities to determine the causes of the accident,” the company said in a statement.

It was the deadliest plane crash since January 2023, when 72 people died on a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that malfunctioned and crashed as it approached for landing. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error.

At an event in southern Brazil, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva asked the audience to observe a minute of silence as he announced the news. On Friday evening, he declared three days of mourning.

Firefighters, military police and the state civil defense agency sent teams to the crash site. Sao Paulo Public Security Secretary Guilherme Deret told reporters that no survivors had been found. He also said that the plane’s black box had been found.

“I thought it was going to land in my yard. It was scary, but thank God there were no casualties among the locals. It seems the 62 people inside the plane were the real victims,” ​​a resident and eyewitness who gave her name as Ana Lucia de Lima told reporters near the crash site.

Parana state Governor Ratinho Junior told reporters in Vinedo that many of the passengers were doctors from his state attending a seminar.

“They were people who were used to saving lives, and now they lost their lives in such tragic circumstances,” Junior said, adding that he had friends on board. “It’s a sad day.”

Video obtained by The Associated Press from an eyewitness and verified by The Associated Press showed at least two bodies strewn among the burning debris.

Brazil’s Globo News television network showed aerial footage of an area where smoke was rising from a burning plane body. Additional footage broadcast earlier by Globo News showed the plane falling flat.

A report from Globo TV’s meteorological center said it “confirmed the possibility of ice formation in the Vinhedo area,” and local media quoted analysts as saying ice was the likely cause of the crash.

But aviation expert Lito Souza warned that weather conditions alone may not be enough to explain the plane crashing the way it did.

“Analyzing a plane crash through photos alone can lead to wrong conclusions about the causes,” Souza told The Associated Press by phone. “But we can see that the plane lost support, there was no horizontal speed. And in this flat spin, there was no way to regain control of the plane.”

Marcelo Mora, operations manager at Vopas, told reporters on Friday evening that despite the forecast of ice formation, these levels were within acceptable levels for aircraft.

Similarly, Lt. Col. Carlos Henrique Balde, of the Brazilian Air Force Center for Air Accident Investigation and Prevention, told reporters at a late afternoon news conference that it was too early to confirm whether ice was the cause of the accident.

“The aircraft is certified in many countries to fly in severe icing conditions, including in countries unlike ours, where the impact of icing is more significant,” said Baldi, who heads the center’s investigations department.

In an earlier statement, the center said the plane’s pilots did not call for help and did not say they were operating in bad weather conditions.

In a separate statement, Brazil’s federal police said it had already begun its investigation, sending in specialists in aircraft accidents and identifying disaster victims.

Authorities began transporting bodies to the morgue on Friday, and called on family members of the victims to bring any medical tests, X-rays and dental exams to help identify the bodies.

Franco-Italian aircraft manufacturer ATR said in a statement that it had been informed that the incident involved its ATR 72-500 aircraft, adding that the company’s specialists were “fully engaged in supporting the investigation and the customer.”

The ATR 72 is mainly used for short-haul flights. It is manufactured by a joint venture between Airbus in France and Leonardo in Italy. According to the Aviation Safety Network database, ATR 72 crashes have killed 470 people since the 1990s.

The Capilla neighborhood where the plane crashed on Friday is far from the center of the thriving city of 77,000 people. The plane had taken off from Cascavel in Parana state.

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Sa Pessoa reported from Guarulhos. AP video journalist Tatiana Polastri contributed from Vinhedo. AP writer David Koenig contributed from Dallas.