A passenger plane with 61 people on board crashed in Brazil’s São Paulo state on Thursda, with all passengers and crew dead.

“There are no survivors,” Col Emerson Massera of the Brazilian military police told reporters at the crash site in the city of Vinhedo late on Thursday.

According to Massera the fire had been brought under control, but about 50 firefighters were still working to cool down the area.

“It’s a very sad scene; our work now is focused on clearing the area so that the investigation and identification of the bodies can proceed,” he said.

According to Col Cassio Araújo de Freitas, the general commander of the military police, no casualties were reported on the ground besides those on the aircraft.

The ATR-72 turboprop plane was en route from Cascavel, in the state of Paraná, to Guarulhos, in São Paulo, when it crashed in a residential neighbourhood about 76km away from the state capital.

Ana Lúcia de Lima, who resides nearby, told the UOL news website that the noise was so loud it sounded like it was falling into her house.

Another resident, Daniel de Lima, said he heard a loud noise before looking outside and seeing the plane in a horizontal spiral.

“It was rotating, but it wasn’t moving forward,” he told Reuters. “Soon after, it fell out of the sky and exploded.”