A small plane crashed Sunday afternoon near an airport in Montana, with 17 people including several children reportedly killed, US authorities said.

The sing-engine Pilatus PC12 plane crashed in a cemetery around 2:30 p.m. local time in Butte, about 100 kilometers south of Helena, state capital of Montana, according to a spokesman of the Federal Aviation Administration.

In this picture provided by Martha Guidoni via The Montana Standard, a fire burns inside the Holy Cross Cemetery after a small, singe-engine plane crashed in an area just south of the Bert Mooney Airport in Butte, Mont. on Sunday, March 22, 2009. Seventeen people, including several children, were killed in the incident, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.[Xinhua]

The leased plane, whose passengers included several young children, was en route to Butte for a ski vacation from California, officials said. It was unknown if anyone on the ground was injured in the crash.

According to the Montana Standard, eyewitnesses said that the plane was doing steep angle turns and then went into nose dive before crashing in Holy Cross Cemetery just south of the Bert Mooney Airport in Butte.

Investigators of the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are on the way to the crash site, officials said.

(Xinhua News Agency March 23, 2009)