AT LEAST NINE people died when a small plane crashed this morning in Gramado, in southern Brazil, authorities said, slamming into a commercial area of the tourist city.

The aircraft crashed into the chimney of a building, struck the second floor of a house and then “fell on a furniture store,” the Rio Grande do Sul state security secretariat said in a statement.

An inn was also damaged, it added.

“There are nine deaths confirmed by the civil defense, and there are no survivors of the plane,” Cleber dos Santos Lima, director of the Interior Police Department of the state civil police, told news agency AFP.

Authorities have not yet confirmed how many passengers and crew were traveling on the plane, a Piper Cheyenne 400 turboprop, but earlier said they thought it was carrying 10 people.

At least 15 people were taken to the hospital, most for smoke inhalation from the fire caused by the crash.

The plane had taken off from the municipality of Canela, another tourist town in Rio Grande do Sul.

Gramado is a popular tourist city in Brazil, with a significant influx of visitors during the Christmas season.