AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Turkish Airlines plane with 134 passengers and crew aboard crashed in light fog while trying to land at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday, killing nine people and injuring dozens.

Officials said some 84 people were taken to hospitals, including 25 who were severely hurt, when flight TK 1951 from Istanbul crashed into a field short of a runway at Schiphol, Europe's fifth-largest airport by passenger volume.

Six were in critical condition.

"We cannot say anything about the cause at the moment," acting local mayor Michel Bezuijen told reporters. "The priority...is providing help and care."

The bodies of three crew members, left in the cockpit amid the plane's wreckage for investigation, were later taken out. Dutch media said the pilot and co-pilot were among the dead.

Officials said they had found the plane's flight data recorder and that it would be analyzed.

Earlier, Dutch officials said 135 people were on board the plane, but that was revised to 134.

Dutch television showed what appeared to be covered bodies on the ground near the crumpled, single-aisle Boeing 737-800.

At least four Americans, who work for the plane's manufacturer Boeing, were on the plane, an official said.

The airliner lay in three parts, with the tail section of the fuselage ripped off, and a wide crack just behind the cockpit. The engines had broken off and no fire was visible.

The plane broke up when it collided with the ground north of a runway at Schiphol, which is 20 km (12 miles) southwest of Amsterdam's center. Survivors were rushed to hospitals in Amsterdam as well as nearby Haarlem and other cities.

"We fell suddenly and stopped," said a passenger who gave only his surname, Mutlucan. "There was a lot of screaming. We crashed and landed in what looked like a field."

"The pilot told us we would be landing in 15 minutes, but seven or eight minutes later we hit the ground."

LIGHT WINDS

Weather reports at the time of the crash indicated decent visibility despite misty conditions, and light winds.

"I thought it was a car collision. We heard a sort of loud and strange sound," eyewitness Randy Cordes, 14, told Reuters. "I saw one engine that was burning but the fire died quickly."

Officials said late on Wednesday they were still trying to confirm passenger identities, which included Dutch, Turkish and U.S. nationals.

A flight from Istanbul carrying relatives of crash victims was to land later on Wednesday.

The Turkish airliner crashed 1 mile short of the "polderbaan" runway, the furthest from terminal buildings, on an approach from the north between Schiphol and Haarlem.

Dutch Transport Minister Camiel Eurlings has said Turkish Airlines met all safety regulations at Schiphol, but added in a statement that the cause of the accident will be investigated.

"The pilot is an experienced one who is a former member of the Turkish Air Force," Turkish Airlines Chief Executive Temel Kotil said.

Wednesday's crash was the 11th accident involving a Turkish Airlines flight in the past 20 years, the NLR Air Traffic Safety Institute in Amsterdam said in a statement.

Turkish Airlines had a troublesome safety record in the 1970s, with 608 lives lost in around two years, but the modern airline's safety record has improved. Wednesday's crash was its second fatal incident this decade, according to the Flight Safety Foundation.

The crash appeared to be the worst at Schiphol since an El Al cargo plane crashed into high-rise apartment blocks in 1992, killing 43 people, 39 of them on the ground.

NEW YORK – A US Airways pilot guided his jetliner into the frigid Hudson River after a flock of birds knocked out both its engines just after takeoff Thursday, and all 155 people on board were pulled to safety as the plane slowly sank. "We had a miracle on 34th Street. I believe now we have had a miracle on the Hudson," Gov. David Paterson said.

One victim suffered two broken legs, a paramedic said, but there were no other reports of serious injuries.

The plane, an Airbus A320 that had taken off minutes earlier from LaGuardia Airport bound for Charlotte, N.C., was submerged up to its windows in the river when rescuers arrived in Coast Guard vessels and ferries. Some passengers waited in water up to their knees, standing on the wing of the plane for help.

Police drivers had to rescue some of the passengers from underwater, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Among those on board was one infant who appeared to be fine, the mayor said.

Helen Rodriguez, a paramedic who was among the first to arrive at the scene, said she saw one woman with two broken legs. Fire officials said others were evaluated for hypothermia, bruises and other minor injuries.

The crash took place on a 20-degree day, one of the coldest of the season in New York. State environmental officials estimated the water was 41 degrees.

"It would appear that the pilot did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river, and then making sure everybody got out," Bloomberg said.

Passenger Jeff Kolodjay of Norwalk, Conn., said he heard a single explosion two or three minutes into the flight. He said looked out the left side of the plane and saw one of the engines on fire.

"The captain said, `Brace for impact because we're going down,'" Kolodjay said. He added: "It was intense. It was intense. You've got to give it to the pilot. He made a hell of a landing."

Witnesses said the plane's pilot appeared to guide the plane down. Bob Read, a television producer who saw the crash from his office window, said it appeared to be a "controlled descent."

Paramedics treated at least 78 patients, fire officials said. Coast Guard boats rescued 35 people who were immersed in the frigid water and ferried them to shore. Some of the rescued were shivering and wrapped in white blankets, their feet and legs soaked.

US Airways Flight 1549 took off at 3:26 p.m. It was less than a minute later when the pilot reported a "double bird strike" and said he needed to return to LaGuardia, said Doug Church, a spokesman for the National Air Traffic Controllers Union. He said the controller told the pilot to divert to an airport in nearby Teterboro, N.J.

The plane splashed into the water roughly off 48th Street in midtown Manhattan.

US Airways CEO Doug Parker confirmed that 150 passengers, three flight attendants and two pilots were on board the jetliner.

An official speaking on condition of anonymity because the investigation was still ongoing identified the pilot as Chelsey B. Sullenberger III. A woman answered and hung up when the AP asked to speak with Sullenberger's family in Danville, Calif.

Sullenberger, 58, described himself in an online professional profile as a 29-year employee of US Airways. He started his own consulting business, Safety Reliability Methods Inc., two years ago.

Bank of America and Wells Fargo said they had employees on the plane. Charlotte is a major banking center.

The Federal Aviation Administration says there were about 65,000 bird strikes to civil aircraft in the United States from 1990 to 2005, or about one for every 10,000 flights.

"They literally just choke out the engine and it quits," said Joe Mazzone, a retired Delta Air Lines pilot. He said air traffic control towers routinely alert pilots if there are birds in the area.

The Hudson crash took place almost exactly 27 years after an Air Florida plane bound for Tampa crashed into the Potomac River just after takeoff from Washington National Airport, killing 78 people. Five people on that flight survived.

On Dec. 20, a Continental Airlines plane veered off a runway and slid into a snowy field at the Denver airport, injuring 38 people. That was the first major crash of a commercial airliner in the United States since Aug. 27, 2006, when 49 people were killed after a Comair jetliner mistakenly took off from the wrong runway in Lexington, Ky.

Does that mean free plane rides for the baby?

BOSTON – There were 124 passengers on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 when it left the Netherlands. There were 125 when it landed in Boston.

Phil Orlandella, a spokesman for Logan International Airport, says a woman went into labor and gave birth to an apparently healthy baby girl over the Atlantic Ocean on Wednesday during the eight-hour flight from Amsterdam.

Orlandella said a doctor and a paramedic who were on the flight assisted in the birth. He said the plane landed without incident about 10:30 a.m., and the mother and baby were immediately taken to Massachusetts General Hospital.

Orlandella said he did not know the nationality of the mother, but said for customs' purposes the baby was considered a Canadian citizen because she was born over Canada's airspace.