Law enforcement officials confirmed reports of a plane crash at Georgia Highway 21 in Garden City, Ga., on Wednesday.
The 165th Airlift Wing reported that the plane is a C-130 Hercules military cargo plane from the Puerto Rico Air National Guard.
At least five people were killed in the crash, a Georgia Air National Guard spokesman told The Associated Press.
Capt. Jeff Bezore of the Georgia Air National Guard's 165th Air Wing told the AP he couldn't say how many people in total were on the plane.
The plane was on a training mission, according to a military news release.
The Chatham County Coroner's officials were called to the scene of the crash about 12:45 p.m., according to deputy coroner Tiffany Williams.
Williams said the Coroner's Office had been informed by officials at the scene that there were two fatalities, but that Coroner's Office had not confirmed the deaths.
The names of those killed in the crash were not released pending notification of next of kin, officials said.
Gregory Martin, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said the plane was bound for Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona.
Chelsea Sinclair, who works at a nearby Parker's, said the store shook when the plane crashed.
"It went nose-first down," she said. "We're hearing it was a military passenger plane.
"We were seeing a bunch of black smoke, but now it's just EMS and fire trucks and police," she said.
Seth Myers, of Port Wentworth, said he'd just finished a delivery for Deli Mart about three to five minutes before the crash.
As he drove on South Coastal Highway to his next stop, he smelled "burning rubber and fuel."
"And when I looked in my rearview mirror," he said, "I saw a ball of flame and then a big mushroom cloud."
Mariah Majors, an employee at the Carey Hilliard's on Highway 21, said she could see smoke in the air but could not see the plane.
"There was a loud boom, and our lights flickered on and off," Majors said. "I turned around about two to three minutes later and saw tons of smoke."
Bartender and manager Anastasia Ockerman was behind the bar at the Hercules Bar and Grill around lunchtime when she saw a string of emergency response vehicles flash past.
"I didn't hear anything," she said, when asked if she'd witnessed the crash, which happened just a couple of miles the Dean Forest Road bar. "I just saw all the police cars and emergency vehicles and fire trucks. ... Then, I looked out the window and saw black smoke."
Joseph Sheppard, who was at his job at La Bastille nearby on Bourne Avenue, said he didn't see the crash, only the "heavy, heavy smoke" in the aftermath.
As the smoke dissipated, he said, helicopters buzzed around the crash scene, and fire trucks continued to rush toward the scene.
Around 3 p.m. Wednesday, some local businesses were still without their telephone and internet services. A note on the City Line Gas Food Mart card reader said "Credit/Debit down due to Plane Crash."
This is not the first crash involving U.S. military aircraft in recent weeks.
In early April, three military aircraft went down across the country within four days.
On April 3, four Marines were killed in a helicopter near El Centro, Calif., after leaving the Twentynine Palms training base to practice landing on "unimproved landing zones," according to a U.S. Naval Institute news release.
On April 4, a U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds pilot was killed when his F-16 jet crashed at Nevada's Nellis Air Force Base during "a routine aerial demonstration training flight," said a news release from the air force base.
Then, on April 6, two US Army soldiers were killed in an Apache helicopter crash during routine training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, according to the U.S. Army's101st Airborne Division.
