Three crew members were killed when a Zimbabwe-registered cargo plane crashed and caught fire on take-off at Shanghai’s Pudong airport.

The plane left the runway and crashed into a storage building, sending thick black smoke billowing across the scene.

The plane, with a total of seven crew members on board, Avient Aviation McDonnell Douglas MD-11 freighter, registration Z-BAV  aircraft destined to Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. It flew out of the runway and crashed at the safety zone of the airport at around 8:12 am. It is believed that a failure to lower the plane’s undercarriage might have caused the accident.

The police, firefighters and armed police soon rushed to the site for the rescue and blocked the area, and the fire, which also lead to an ignition of a nearby warehouse that belongs to China Eastern Airlines, was put off at around 9 am.

So far the four injured were receiving treatments at the nearby Pudong People’s Hospital, one of them was reported to be seriously injured.

Shanghai television reported that the tail of the plane had broken into two or three parts, and that hundreds of firefighters were at the scene.