A flight operated by Central American Airlines (CAA) has crashed in Honduras, killing all 14 people on board.

A senior government official and a top union leader were believed to be among the dead, alongside two Americans and a Canadian.

The plane came down in the town of Las Mesitas, five kilometres south of Toncontin Airport in Tegucigalpa.

Melvin Duarte, spokesman for the Attorney General’s office said the Let L-410 Turbolet was carrying two pilots and 12 passengers, including Assistant Secretary for Public Works Rodolfo Rovelo, United Workers Federation of Honduras leader Jose Israel Salinas and former Economy Secretary Carlos Chain.

Three days of mourning have been declared in honour of the government officials killed.

Airline manager Felix Pacheco told the Associated Press: “I am destroyed, in shock, because of what happened.”

At present the cause of the crash is unclear, with investigators on the ground whether a short runway (which is less than 1,600 meters long) at the airport of fog may have played a role in the accident.

At least 10 planes have crashed in and around the Toncontin airport since October 1989, when a Honduran commercial jet went down, killing 131 people.