STOCKHOLM: Nine people died Sunday when a small aircraft being used for tourism crashed in northwest Sweden, the regional authority said.

"The nine people on board are dead," Gabriella Bandling, spokeswoman for the Vaesterbotten region, told AFP. She did not say who they were.

According to Swedish media reports, the plane was carrying people for a parachute jump but crashed a little after 2:00 pm (1200 GMT). The plane, a GippsAero GA8 Airvan, had taken off from Umea airport.

Amateur footage posted online by the Swedish daily Aftonbladet shows the plane plunging from the sky in a vertical line.

"I heard a weird sound, which didn't sound normal," one witness, Peter Larsson, told the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter. "I looked up and saw a plane spinning like a top.

"At first I thought it was an acrobatic flight but we quickly realised that something was wrong."

The wreck of the plane has been found on an island in the archipelago south of Umea. —AFP