LONDON • A plane crashed, leading to several casualties, at an air show near Brighton, on England's south coast yesterday, emergency services said.

The aircraft hit several cars on a main road, the A27, to the north of Shoreham airport, where the air show was taking place, police said.

"There have been several casualties but we have no further information on these at the moment," Sussex Police said in a statement.

Shoreham Air Show said on Twitter that there had been a "major incident" and that emergency services were responding, Reuters reported.

The road was closed in both directions. Media reports say the plane was a Hawker Hunter fighter jet, a type that dates from the 1950s, and that the pilot was pulled from the burning wreckage.

Video footage posted on Twitter shows the moment of the crash when the jet slams into the A27, then bursting into a huge ball of flames. Cars can be seen on the road at the moment of impact. The footage also shows the plane trying to complete a loop before crashing.

"The aeroplane involved is a Hawker Hunter T mark 7. And (the pilot had) just begun his flying display," the BBC quoted witness Stephen Jones as saying.

"He had gone up into a loop and as he was coming out of the loop I just thought, you are too low, you are too low, pull up."

The Daily Mail quoted another witness, Mr Tony Wallace, as saying: "We could see it all; it went down on the A27 by the lights near the airport. That road has been chockablock all day and we can see stationary cars there now. There's still plumes of smoke, fire engines and a car covered in foam. It looks like a war zone."