Witnesses say that the pilot of the Airbus-320 which crashed yesterday in Brazil with 186 passengers and crew on board was trying to take off again when he overshot the runway.

The accident happened after the plane failed to brake as it landed in heavy rain at Sao Paolo's Congonhas airport, on a runway that has been repeatedly criticised for being too short.

The passenger jet operated by TAM, Brazil's largest airline, veered left on the runway then flew off the steep bank that separates it from a multi-lane freeway below, which was packed with cars and pedestrians at the height of the evening rush hour.

Witnesses say that the plane cleared the road and was trying to climb, but failed to gain enough height and crashed into a building and exploded, right beside a Shell petrol station. Rescue personnel were today still trying to confirm exactly how many people were in the building - a TAM cargo depot - and the surrounding area when it was hit by the plane.

"The plane accelerated when it reached the end of the runway and tried to take off again to avoid the avenue, but it crashed into the building and exploded," Junior Matos, a salesman, told the AFP news agency.

Witnesses described a scene of carnage as flames engulfed the crash site and people tried to jump free of the building. Fire fighters said that the temperatures in the plane during the blaze would have reached 1,000° C, making identification of the victims very difficult.

By dawn, firemen had pulled 62 charred bodies from the wreckage, 15 of which had been recovered from the ground. Three people in the building were found still alive, but died in the hospital, raising the official death toll so far to 65, Sao Paulo state public security secretariat said.

"I saw about 25 charred bodies around the plane, and a dead couple inside a car," said Douglas Ferrari, a doctor who assisted firefighters in their rescue efforts. "It was horrible." He added that many workers had jumped out of the windows of the building next to the petrol station.

Authorities say they expect no survivors from the plane and fear that more than 200 people in total might be dead, making it the worst air disaster in Brazil’s history.

The plane was a domestic flight from from the southern city of Porto Alegre. A Brazilian congressman was among the passengers. As a partial passenger list was published, relatives, many wailing with grief, gathered at Porto Alegre and Sao Paolo airports desperate for news.

The black box flight recorder has been recovered. In France, Airbus said it was sending five specialists to Brazil to provide "full technical assistance" to France’s bureau for accident investigations and to Brazilian authorities in carrying out the crash inquiry.

The authorities will now have to look at the state of the runway involved in the accident and whether it should have been opened after recent repair works. It had been shut for 45 days to resolve a problem of water collecting on the surface which forced the postponement or diversion of flights during heavy rains.

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