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A seven-year-old girl has survived a plane crash that killed her mother, father, nine-year-old sister and 14-year-old cousin, in the US state of Kentucky, police have said.

The crash survivor, whose identity has not been released, trekked about a mile without shoes through rough terrain in near-freezing temperatures to reach the first home she found in the rural county of Kuttawa on Friday evening.

“I come to the door and there’s a little girl, 7, bloody nose, bloody arms, bloody legs, one sock, no shoes, crying,’’ Larry Wilkins told The Associated Press news agency in an interview on Saturday.

“She told me that her mom and dad were dead, and she had been in a plane crash, and the plane was upside down.’’

Dean Patterson, a local police officer, said that federal aviation administration officials arrived at the scene to try to determine why the small Piper PA-34, which took off from Florida and was bound for Illinois, crashed as it flew over rural southwestern Kentucky.

The plane had reported engine trouble and lost contact with air traffic controllers shortly before the accident, authorities said. — AFP