A catastrophic plane crash has claimed the lives of all 12 people on board a private skydiving aircraft that went down Sunday in rural central Missouri, United States, emergency response officials confirmed to AFP. The tragedy unfolded near Butler Memorial Airport, located just 60 miles south of Kansas City in Bates County, according to Dennis Jacobs, director of the county’s local Emergency Management Agency. Local media accounts detail that the plane was carrying 11 recreational skydivers and a single qualified pilot when it departed the airfield around 11:30 a.m. local time. Almost immediately after lifting off, for reasons that remain unclear at this early stage of investigation, the aircraft reversed course and came down in a field adjacent to a major state highway. In the immediate aftermath of the crash, state highway authorities closed the affected stretch of road to through traffic, both to support emergency response operations and to secure the crash site for official investigators. In the hours following the incident, multiple response teams arrived at the scene to conduct search and recovery operations and begin the preliminary probe into what caused the crash. These teams include local emergency medical and fire crews, officers from the Missouri State Highway Patrol, and technical investigators from two federal oversight bodies: the Federal Aviation Administration, which regulates civilian aviation, and the National Transportation Safety Board, which leads probes into major civil aviation accidents across the United States. As of Sunday evening, no further details on the identities of the victims or potential causes of the crash have been released to the public.