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Seven people were killed and more than a dozen were injured on Saturday when a British airshow went awry, sending a military jet crashing into several vehicles on a busy main road, police said.
A Hawker Hunter jet erupted into a massive fireball and sent billows of thick black smoke into the air after it plunged while performing in the Shoreham Airshow near Brighton in southern England.
Fourteen other people suffered minor wounds. A patient with life-threatening injuries was taken to the hospital. The seven victims all died on the scene, officials said.
The pilot of the single-seat fighter jet was attempting to loop in the air at the start of his show but did not complete the trick and plummeted to the ground, eyewitnesses told BBC.
“He’d gone up into a loop and as he was coming out of the loop I just thought, ‘You’re too low, you’re too low, pull up’,” witness Stephen Jones said. “And he flew straight into the ground.”
Shoreham Airshow officials canceled Sunday's show due to the tragedy.
“We would like to apologise for the inconvenience this may cause, but we hope the public will understand our decision,” the group said. “Our focus at the moment is on helping the authorities with their investigations.”
Image: Emergency services and crash investigation officers work at the site where a Hawker Hunter fighter jet crashed onto the A27 road at Shoreham near Brighton, Britain. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters