New York - A small plane crashed into a high rise apartment building on the East Side of Manhattan on Wednesday, killing at least one person, jogging fears of another terrorist attack and triggering deployment of US fighter aircraft, broadcast reports said.
Within a half hour or 40 minutes after the crash at 2:45 pm, the Pentagon had scrambled fighters from the North American Air Defence over New York City's airspace, Cable News Network reported.
FBI and military officials however said there was no indication that the crash into a 20th or higher storey of 524 East 72nd Street was a terrorist attack.
After reports that residents could be trapped by heavy smoke in the building, Cable News Network reported the building had been evacuated.
Admiral Tim Keating, chief of US Northern Command, said there was no intelligence suggesting there were planes involved in a potential terrorist attack.
'We had no indication that this was a flight of interest,' he said on CNN, adding that precautions had been taken in case the event turns out to be something beyond an accident.
'We reserve the right to exercise our capabilities which is what we have done here,' he said of the decision to scramble jets.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a telephone news conference that the crash was caused by a small fixed-wing aircraft that was flying 'under visual flight rules' in the East River corridor.
The FAA spokesperson, Diane Spitaliere, cautioned however that only a preliminary probe had been carried out. She said New York City airports would remain open, but restrictions would be put in place for a one-mile radius around the accident site.
At least one person was killed, according to New York security officials quoted by broadcasters.
Within the hour, firefighters appeared to have partially doused the flames that had been licking out of a high floor - perhaps as high as the 20th or 30th - of the 50-storey building. Video from the scene showed water spraying onto and out of the building.
An eyewitness drew parallels to the disastrous 2001 terrorist attacks on New York's World Trade Center, which destroyed the two buildings on Manhattan's lower west side and killed nearly 3,000 people.
'The street was filled with black smoke from street level to the sky, which of course reminded me of five years ago,' Rich Behar told Fox News. 'The building's burning on top, there was chaos on the street.'
Behar, a widely known journalist, said he had heard the forceful 'sound of a bomb ... a sound like something falling.'
'I saw people screaming and running,' he said. 'There was a lot of horror and terror when it hit.'
Broadcasters relayed reassurances from security officials that it did not appear to be an intentional attack. Stock prices nipped down for several minutes on the trading boards of the world's financial capital, but bounced back on the reassurances, Fox reported.
© 2006 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur
