Eleven people are dead and one is seriously injured following a plane crash at a parachute club in southern Poland.

“Twelve people were on board the plane and the only survivor was taken to hospital and is in a serious condition,” emergency services spokeswoman Justyna Sochacka said on Saturday.

The plane, a Piper Navajo, reportedly had 11 parachutists and a pilot on board.

“It was flying from the south and the engine was making strange sounds,” said eyewitness Barbara Minczykiewicz, a resident of the village of Topolow, near Czestochowa, where the plane crashed, quoted by Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza broadsheet daily.

“It was flying very low, close to houses. It tilted to one side on its wing and caught fire,” she said.

Village residents managed to pull one live person and two bodies out of the air craft, according to Minczykiewicz.

The light plane took off from an air field in Rudniki.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known but Polish media reports suggest the aircraft was overloaded.