AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Turkish Airlines passenger plane with 135 people aboard crashed in light fog while trying to land at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport on Wednesday, and an official said nine people were killed.

Haarlemmermeer acting Mayor Michel Bezuijen said at least 50 people were injured, including 25 severely hurt, when flight TK 1951 crashed at 10:31 local time (0931 GMT) short of a runway at Schiphol, Europe's fifth-largest by passenger volume.

We cannot say anything about the cause at the moment. The priority of the authorities is providing help and care, Bezuijen told reporters.

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

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

The jetliner lay in three parts, with the tail section of the fuselage ripped off, and a wide crack in the fuselage just behind the cockpit. The airliner had not caught fire.

Airport officials said the aircraft was a Boeing model 737-800, flight TK 1951 from Istanbul.

Turkish television reported the two-engine plane had run out of fuel, but a Turkish Transport Ministry undersecretary said that was speculation.

Bezuijen declined to respond to questions over whether the plane had run out of fuel.

We are in the middle of a field now, approximately 5-6 km from the airport, survivor Mustafa Bahcecioglu told Turkish broadcaster Channel 24.

The plane, on a flight from Istanbul, broke up when it hit the ground north of a runway at Schiphol, which is 20 km (12 miles) southwest of Amsterdam's center. Survivors were being rushed to hospitals in Amsterdam as well as nearby Haarlem.

Bezuijen said officials were analyzing passenger details and could not yet confirm the identities of those killed.

QUESTIONS START

All flights at the airport were canceled, but traffic gradually resumed later in the day.

Tuesday's crash appeared to be the worst at Schiphol since an El Al cargo plane crashed into high-rise apartment blocks in a southeastern suburb of Amsterdam in October 1992, killing 43 people, 39 of them on the ground.

That plane was a Boeing 747 jumbo that plowed into the buildings, setting them on fire, shortly after takeoff when two of its engines broke off.

The Turkish airliner was reported to have landed two miles short of the runway on an approach from the north.

One local media report quoted a farmer saying it had hit a tree as it sank to the ground.

It should have been at 600 feet at that point, if it was two miles short, former Boeing pilot Alistair Rosenschein told Britain's Sky News television.

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 CEO Temel Kotil said.

Turkish Airlines is not on the European Union blacklist of banned airlines.

Safety authorities in the Netherlands banned Turkey's Onur Air from flying into the country in May 2005 due to safety concerns after a series of incidents.

The ban was lifted two weeks later after the Turkish government submitted an action plan to Dutch authorities aimed at improving the airline's safety.

(Writing by Reed Stevenson; Additional reporting by Aaron Gray-Block, Niclas Mika, Gilbert Kreijger, Catherine Hornby in Amsterdam, Philip Blenkinsop in Brussels, Paul de Bendern in Istanbul and Ibon Villelabeitia in Ankara; Editing by Michael Roddy)