VANCOUVER (Canada), Oct 20: One person died and two were injured on Friday when a light aircraft smashed into a ninth-floor suburban apartment in this western Canadian metropolis, police said.

“There was one fatality believed to be the pilot and sole occupant of the aircraft,” said a police statement.

The Piper Seneca, a twin-engine, six-seater aircraft, crashed into the densely populated residential neighbourhood of Richmond just after lifting off from Vancouver International Airport on Friday afternoon.

It was bound for the nearby suburb of Pitt Meadows, some 40 kilometres northeast, Kate Donegani of the Vancouver Airport Authority said.

Scores of residents of nearby apartments were evacuated as fire officials cleaned up aviation fuel. No flames or smoke were visible after the aircraft smashed through the outside wall and was engulfed entirely by the building.

Witnesses told local television that a woman in red appeared in the destroyed window shortly after the crash, screaming for help in Chinese.

Police said Canada’s national transportation authority would investigate the cause of the crash.—AFP