A light aircraft crashed this Thursday on a highway in Selangor state, central Malaysia, killing all eight people on board and two on the ground, the local police chief announced.

According to Selangor police chief Hussein Omar Khan, the six passengers and two crew members of the chartered plane died in the crash.

"The victims on the ground were the drivers of a motorcycle and a car that were hit when the plane crashed on the highway, he added," said the US news agency AP.

The accident occurred near the residential neighborhood of Elmina, on the outskirts of Shah Alam, the capital of the state of Selangor, on the west coast of the Malaysian peninsula.

Transport Minister Anthony Loke said the plane had taken off from the tourist island of Langkawi in the north of the country and was due to land at Subang airport, west of the capital Kuala Lumpur.

A few minutes before landing, the aircraft veered off course and crashed on the highway in the Shah Alam district.

"No distress call was made by the aircraft," said the head of the civil aviation authority, Norazman Mahmud, in a statement quoted by the French news agency AFP.

Mahmud added that an investigation will be launched to try to ascertain the circumstances of the accident.

Johari Harun, a member of the Pahang state parliament (center), was one of the passengers on the plane, according to the police.

A former member of the Malaysian Air Force told reporters that he saw the plane flying erratically before it crashed on the highway.

The national news agency Bernama quoted witnesses as saying that the plane, a Beechcraft 390, exploded on impact.