One person killed after plane crashes into apartment block in Atlanta

Resident says he heard plane struggling to gain altitude as it took off from a nearby airport

One person has died after a small plane crashed into a house in the Atlanta area, according to officials.

A second person on the plane remained unaccounted for on Wednesday, Dion Bentley, the captain of the Dekalb Count fire department, told reporters.

The Piper PA-28 plane crashed shortly after taking off from Dekalb-Peachtree Airport outside of Atlanta at about 10:30 am local time, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said in a tweet.

The plane crashed into a row of houses, the fire captain said.

Emergency crews initially had trouble accessing the wreckage. There were no injuries reported on the ground and nobody was in the house at the time of the crash. The FAA has launched an investigation into the crash.

A large section of wall and part of the roof was knocked out of a building at the complex.

Conditions were foggy in the area on Wednesday morning, officials said.

A resident, West Hutchinson, said he heard a plane struggling to gain altitude before it crashed.

Mr Hutchinson told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he was sitting on a back porch near the site of the crash. He said he heard a loud crack, and it was obvious the plane had crashed because there was complete silence afterward.

"I saw two or three other guys riding around frantically looking for the plane because they had heard the same noise," he said.

Mr Hutchinson reportedly called 911 and also got into his vehicle to search for the plane.

"You couldn't see any smoke or any signs of a crash coming up from anywhere," he told the paper.

The Associated Press contributed to this report