One person has died after a light aircraft has crashed into a field close to a residential area in Zeeland.

Emergency services were called to the scene of the impact on the southern edge of Middelburg, near the suburb of Mortiere, at around 8.45am on Tuesday.

The regional safety board confirmed that one person in the aircraft had died and an investigation was ongoing. Fire, ambulance and police teams responded to the crash, but the aircraft did not catch fire.

One local resident told Omroep Zeeland that the noise was “like a racing car going past”.

Midden-Zeeland Airport confirmed that the plane, a Reims-Cessna F172P Skyhawk II, had taken off from its airfield shortly before the crash.

Traffic on the A58 motorway, which runs past the scene, was not disrupted, the highways agency Rijkswaterstaat said.