An Indonesian aircraft crashed into a crowded suburb in the city of Medan today, bursting into flames and killing around 100 passengers and 30 people on the ground, officials said.

Between 10 and 17 passengers are reported to have survived the crash, which occurred soon after the Mandala Airlines Boeing 737 took off from Medan airport on its way to Jakarta, the capital of Indonesia.

There were 116 passengers and crew on board the aircraft, according to Mandala Airlines. The passengers included the governor of North Sumatra province and his predecessor, both of whom were among the dead.

The airliner took off in overcast weather and quickly lost height before ploughing through dozens of houses, catching fire and skidding across a main road. Spreading fires and thick black smoke, which engulfed cars, shops and motorcycles sent panic through the neighbourhood.

"The plane had already taken off but suddenly it started shaking and banked steeply to the left and then bang, there was fire everywhere," Rohadi Sitepu, a survivor of the crash told Indonesian television from his hospital bed. "The whole thing only took a matter of seconds."

Mr Sitepu said he believed all the survivors of the crash were sitting in the rear of the aircraft.

According to Zainul Kahar, head of operations at Medan’s search and rescue agency, 30 people on the ground were killed by the crash. The large rescue operation was hampered by flames and by the thousands of curious spectators, according to a doctor at the scene.

"I arrived around 10 minutes after the accident. Burning bodies were everywhere," one local reporter told the Reuters news agency. "Around 10 houses were burned, along with five to six minibuses. The plane was torn into pieces, we could only see the tail."

Heavy rains, which started after the accident, also dogged emergency crews as they sifted through the wreckage of the crash site, which is in one of the busiest neighbourhoods of Medan, Indonesia's third-largest city.

"Temporarily, we are saying the cause is from take-off failure but we don’t know yet whether it was from engine trouble, human error or weather," said Major General Hasril Hamzah Tanjung, the acting president of Mandala Airlines. General Tanjung said that the 24-year-old aircraft was due to retire in 2016.

Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has ordered an investigation into the crash.

Medan, 1,425 km (885 miles) northwest of Jakarta, has been a major staging point for tsunami relief operations in Aceh province, on the northern tip of Sumatra island. The international airport is close to the centre of town and is surrounded by densely populated residential areas.

Mandala Airlines is a Jakarta-based domestic carrier founded in 1969 by a military-run foundation. Its 15-plane fleet consists mainly of 1970s-vintage Boeing 737-200 jets. In recent years, the financially troubled airline has cut services and fares to compete with new budget airlines.

Today's crash follows five major air accidents in August. Some 334 people died in accidents in Peru, Venezuela, Greece and Tunisia last month. A plane also overshot a runway in Toronto and caught fire.

Indonesia’s last air crash was in February, when 26 people were killed as an aircraft operated by Lion Air, a low-cost carrier, skidded off the runway on Java Island. The country’s worst crash was in September 1997, when a Garuda Airbus smashed into mountains near Medan, killing all 232 people on board.

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