Rome, Oct 3: A small private plane carrying six passengers and a crew of two crashed Sunday into a vacant, two-story office building in a Milan suburb, and Italian news reports said all aboard perished.

The LaPresse news agency initially quoted firefighters at the scene saying the pilot and all five passengers aboard were killed. But later LaPresse and other media said there were eight people aboard the flight, including a boy.

Rai state TV said the passengers were believed to be French.

Fire officials couldn't immediately be reached to confirm the nationalities or the number of people aboard the plane.

Firefighters tweeted that no one other than those aboard were involved in the early afternoon crash near a subway station in San Donato Milanese, a small town near Milan. They said several cars in a nearby parking lot were set ablaze, but apparently the vehicles were unoccupied at the time.

A thick column of dark smoke rose from the crash site and was visible for kilometres.

Firefighters were extinguishing the flames of the now-charred building, which reportedly was under renovation.

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Shahdol (MP) (PTI): An assistant sub-inspector (ASI) has been crushed to death by a tractor-trolley used for transporting illegally mined sand in Madhya Pradesh's Shahdol district, a police official said on Sunday.

Two persons have been arrested in connection with the incident which took place on the intervening night of Saturday-Sunday in Badoli village under Beohari police station limits, 90 km from the district headquarters, Superintendent of Police Kumar Prateek told PTI.

ASI Mahendra Bagri, posted at the Beohari police station, was going along with two colleagues to arrest a person in some case.

On the way, they saw a sand-laden tractor-trolley coming towards their direction and tried to stop it, the official said.

Bagri and the other policemen gave a signal to the driver to stop the tractor carrying the illegally mined sand. But he did not stop and the vehicle ran over the ASI, the police official said.

After the incident, the driver jumped from the tractor and ran away. The speeding vehicle went out of control, collided with a culvert and overturned, Prateek said.

Driver Raj Rawat and Ashutosh Singh, who was piloting the vehicle, were later arrested. The vehicle owner, Surendra Singh, is absconding, he said.

A case was registered against the accused on charges of murder and illegal sand mining under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Mines Act, the official said.

Additional Director General of Police, Shahdol zone, DC Sagar told reporters that a reward of Rs 30,000 has been announced for anyone providing information that would help the police to arrest Surendra Singh.

'Piloting' in Shahdol is used to refer to moving ahead a vehicle while seeing the road is clear and no checking is being done by authorities.

In November last year, a local revenue department official was crushed to death by a tractor-trolley used for transporting illegally mined sand from the Son river in Gopalpur area of Shahdol district.