A Kazakhstan plane with 98 people aboard crashed soon after takeoff early on Friday morning, killing at least 12 people including the pilot.

At least 66 of the flight’s survivors have been taken to hospital, Reuters reports.

The Bek Air aircraft lost altitude soon after takeoff at 7.22am local time before crashing into a concrete fence and a two-storey building, the airport said.

Initial reports said 15 people had died but this was later revised down to 12. 

A survivor told news website Tengrinews she heard a “terrifying sound” before the plane started losing altitude.

“The plane was flying with a tilt. Everything was like in a movie: screaming, shouting, people crying,” she said.

A Reuters reporter travelling to the airport soon after the crash said there was thick fog in the area.

Deputy prime minister Roman Sklyar told reporters: “Before crashing, the aircraft touched the runway with its tail twice. The gear was retracted.

“A commission […] will establish whether this was pilot error or technical issues. The runway was in an ideal condition.”

A Reuters reporter saw the battered remains of the front of the plane and other separate parts of the fuselage scattered around the wreckage of what was left of the house.

In a statement on its Facebook page, the airport said there was no fire and a rescue operation got under way immediately following the crash.

About 1,000 people were working at the snow-covered site of the crash. The weather in Almaty was clear, with mild sub-zero temperatures – common at this time of the year.

Footage showed the front of the broken-up fuselage, which had rammed a house, and the rear of the plane, which was lying in a field next to the airport.

The plane was flying to Nur-Sultan, the country’s capital, formerly known as Astana.

The aircraft was identified as a Fokker-100: a medium-sized, twin-turbofan jet airliner. The company manufacturing the aircraft went bankrupt in 1996 and the production of the Fokker-100 stopped the following year.

All Bek Air and Fokker-100 flights in Kazakhstan have been suspended pending the investigation of the crash, the country’s aviation authorities said.