8 dead in airplane crash in southwest Finland

A small passenger plane carrying 10 parachuters crashed on Sunday in the Satakunta region, Southwest Finland, causing eight dead. Police confirmed that 11 persons were on the plane, including ten passengers and one pilot, when the accident happened around 3:30 p.m. (1230 GMT) near the Jamijarvi Airport, a popular gliding center shared by parachuting clubs. The pilot and two parachuters survived by ejecting from the aircraft before it crashed, and eight others were found dead around the wreckage. The wounded were sent to hospital in Tampere, a major city some 80 km away, and none of them were in serious condition, said a doctor at the scene. Petri Kangas, chief inspector from the Finnish southwest police department told Xinhua that something went wrong with the plane and made it break apart three or four kilometers up in the air. However, the exact cause was not immediately known, as the investigation will continue on Monday morning. Seven hours after the incident, grieving relatives of the dead were seen sobbing at the airport, refusing to make any comment to reporters. The incident turned out to be one of the deadliest in this tiny Nordic country. "This is the worst air disaster in Finland in the last several decades," said Ismo Aaltonen, leading researcher from the Accident Investigation Board of Finland in an interview with the Finnish national broadcaster YLE.