A plane with 48 people on board crashed into a house near Buffalo, New York, and burst into flames late on Thursday, and MSNBC quoted the Federal Aviation Administration as saying there were no survivors on the plane.

Local emergency officials said earlier there were multiple fatalities. CNN said one person was killed on the ground.

The plane, a Continental Express flight operated by Colgan Air, was on a flight from Newark, New Jersey, to Buffalo, when it crashed in the Buffalo suburb of Clarence Center amid rain and sleet, local officials said.

The Federal Aviation Administration said there were 44 passengers and four crew on the plane and it crashed 6 miles (10 km) short of the airport.

A local official said the plane was a 74-seat Bombardier Q400, a turboprop plane. The plane is made by Bombardier Inc. Colgan Air is a subsidiary of Pinnacle Airlines Corp.

One person who heard the crash from about three quarters of a mile (1 km) away, said the crash sounded like an earthquake.

"It was almost like on TV where you hear this high pitched sound. It was like an earthquake. You could feel it," the witness, Keith Burtis, told MSNBC.

"I'm downwind from it and the smoke and smell is still pretty strong."

He said the accident site was a populated area on the edge of farmland.

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