A small plane slammed into the upper floors of the landmark Pirelli tower in the centre of Milan on Thursday, killing three people and triggering fears of a repeat of the September 11 attacks.
Italian Interior Minister Claudio Scajola said the crash was "probably an accident" amid reports that the pilot had sent a distress message to the control tower of Milan's Linate airport shortly before the crash.
Three people including the pilot were killed and some 60 were injured, police said late Thursday, but the majority of the 300 people working in the building were unscathed, if badly shaken.
A Milan councillor had earlier said five people had been killed.
Despite Scajola's public reassurances, Italy's air force was put on full alert "until the situation becomes clear," the crisis unit in Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office said.
Transport Minister Pietro Lunardi said late Thursday it was unclear why the 68-year-old pilot had veered into Milan's tallest building, but that investigators believed he either had a heart attack or was overcome by fumes from a fire on board.
Civil aviation sources said the pilot had signalled he was unable to lower his landing gear, and was apparently trying to do so manually when he lost control of the plane.
The aircraft crashed into the 25th floor of the 30-storey building, a Milan landmark which houses the Lombardy regional authority headquarters, at around 5:45 pm (1545 GMT).
Milan was suddenly thrown into panic as police and ambulance sirens screamed in the centre of Italy's economic capital and thoughts turned to New York's September 11 trauma.
Italy's Senate speaker Marcello Pera fuelled fears by declaring to reporters that it was a "probable attack", before retracting his statement later.
The impact gutted the 25th floor and badly damaged the floors immediately above and below.
An employee of a company located in the tower told AFP the uppermost floors were unoccupied. "The top floors are being renovated and therefore in theory unoccupied."
Smoke poured from the skyscraper in the central Piazza Duca D'Aosta, and the surrounding streets were carpeted with wreckage and office papers. Police sealed off the area.
"We heard a horrible noise, the skyscraper shook, then we threw ourselves down the stairs to get away," a shocked employee said.
"I felt the skyscraper vibrating under my feet, and we immediately got out using the stairs," said another employee, Silvia Varatel, a member of the staff of the Lombardy regional authority.
"There wasn't any jostling even though only two people could get down the stairs at a time."
The pilot was named as Gino Fasulo, 68 and retired. He was an experienced pilot, having logged 5,000 hours of flying time.
His Piper Air Commander plane had taken off from Locarno, Switzerland, at 5:15 and was headed for Milan's Linate airport when he veered off course.
Firefighters said they managed to release a woman who had been trapped in a lift on the 15th floor by climbing down the shaft from the 25th floor.
The Pirelli tower, designed in the 1950s, is one of the world's highest concrete skyscrapers and at 127 metres (420 feet) the tallest building in Italy's financial capital.
In New York, Wall Street's Dow Jones industrials index initially dropped sharply on news of the crash before it recovered. The Frankfurt exchange also plummeted and then rebounded, while after-hours electronic trading was suspended in Milan.
Close to 3,000 people died when three hijacked airliners slammed into the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center on September 11 of last year, leveling the twin towers.
A fourth hijacked plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania.
It was the second time since September 11 that a plane crashed into a skyscraper. Last January, a 15-year-old boy crashed a stolen plane into a building in Tampa in Florida, killing himself.
Thursday's crash will likely revive criticism of Italy's woeful recent aviation safety record, following the runway collision at Milan's Linate airport last October in which 118 people died, and several subsequent near misses.
The government in February sacked the entire board of the Civil Aviation Authority after allegations its members had been influenced by political parties seeking to cash in on contracts.
(China Daily April 19, 2002)
