Eyewitness: Emergency services were at the scene within a minute

Eyewitnesses spoke of seeing lightning strikes as the Air France flight from Paris landed in torrential rain.

Many could not believe that every one of the 279 passengers and 12 crew managed to escape virtually unscathed.

'Really, really scared'

"The plane was going pretty fast and just before touching ground there was... it was all black in the plane, there was no more light, nothing," said French passenger Olivier Dubos.

"And then we went up the runway, we were in the ravine and the plane was continuing rolling on the ravine and then there were a lot of flames."

He went on: "Everybody was really in shock. We were really, really scared that the plane would blow up because there were lots of flames. And we were running really fast out of there."

Fellow passenger Roel Bramar said he was the second person down the emergency chute, having been right at the back of the plane.

He said he "ran like crazy, because there was quite a bit of fire on the ground".

'Puff of smoke'

Mr Bramar said he was sure bad weather was responsible.

"I saw lightning," he said on CNN television. "Maybe the plane had already been hit by lightning," he added.

It came in on the runway, everything looked good. Hit the runway nice and all of a sudden we heard its engines backing up Eyewitness Corey Marks

"The reason I'm mentioning that is because just as we landed, the lights turned off. And that's unusual."

A cameraman for Canada's CBC, John Finlay, also saw lightning.

"Shooting lightning over the airport... they were allowing planes to land but not to take off so I was getting lots of shots of lightning strikes," he said.

"In the middle of quite a downpour there was a large puff of smoke near the end of the runway, and so I picked up gear and ran to the west end of the runway and there you could see it crashed through all the barriers."

'Cracked in half'

Corey Marks was in a car on the nearby busy highway when he saw the plane land.

"It was about 1600 (2000 GMT). It was getting really dark. All of a sudden lightning was happening. A lot of rain was coming down," he told CNN.

"It came in on the runway, everything looked good. Sounded good. Hit the runway nice and all of a sudden we heard its engines backing up."

He described seeing two fireballs burst from the jet as it, "went straight into the valley and cracked in half".

Mr Marks said the emergency services were on the scene within less than a minute.

But he expressed surprise that anyone could have survived. More than an hour after the crash, he said he could still feel the heat of the flames.