Government officials initially said there were only six known survivors but later in the day an airline official said 60 people had survived. Local officials said dozens of bodies were pulled from the wreckage, though it was unclear if they had been passengers.

Smoke and flames engulfed the charred ruins of the aircraft, which appeared to have broken in two when it slammed into the rooftops of about 10 cement homes just outside the airport, destroying them instantly. Soldiers kept onlookers away after U.N. peacekeepers helped douse flames at the crash site.

"Smoke was rising from the plane," said Christian Kilundu, a spokesman for the Goma office of World Vision, an international aid group that has an office less than half a mile from the crash site. "As fire extinguishers were trying to put out the flames, I spoke to a priest who had been pulled from the wreckage. He was disorientated and had no idea what had happened."

Officials said they had no information on casualties among residents of the area.

The plane was operated by the private Congolese company, Hewa Bora, and was headed to the central city of Kisangani, then the capital, Kinshasa. Hewa Bora's Dirk Cramers said 53 passengers and seven crew were taken from the site and were at local hospitals.

Julien Mpaluku, the governor of the province, said there were 79 passengers on board and six crew members.

"We have already picked up many bodies — dozens of bodies. There are a lot of flames, which makes it difficult to know if the bodies we are picking up are those of passengers of the plane or else passers-by or people that lived in the area where the plane crashed," Mpaluku said.

Employees at World Vision said the plane "failed to leave the ground," plowing instead "through wooden houses and shops in the highly populated Birere market."

The plane appeared to have been "totally flattened" by the impact, said Rachel Wolff, a U.S.-based spokeswoman for the organization who has been in contact with her colleagues in Congo.

World Vision employees who visited the scene of the crash said they saw at least eight bodies. Hours afterward, the market stalls where women had been selling their wares earlier in the day were still in flames, said Wolff.

A former pilot who survived the crash, Dunia Sindani, gave a similar account in an interview broadcast over a local U.N. radio station. The plane suffered a problem in one of its wheels — possibly a flat tire — and did not gain the strength to lift off, Sindani said.

Earlier, conflicting accounts said the plane had crashed just after takeoff.

The tragedy underscored the dangers of plane travel in Congo, which has experienced more fatal crashes than any other African country since 1945, according to the Aviation Safety Network.

Just last Friday, the European Union added Hewa Bora Airways to its blacklist of airlines banned from flying in the EU, without specifying a reason.

On Tuesday, European Union spokesman Michele Cercone said she had no information on Hewa Bora specifically but she said that all airlines based in Congo are banned from EU air space.

"That is because there is a general lack of effective control by the civil aviation authorities there to monitor and maintain minimum technical standards" for airplanes, Cercone said.

The EU's current list of banned airlines shows 50 airlines based in Congo, including Hewa Bora. Cercone said that until a few weeks ago one Hewa Bora plane was allowed to fly to Europe under a special exemption, but that has expired.

Associated Press writers Eddy Isango in Kinshasa, Congo and Robert Wielaard in Brussels contributed to this report.