A small jet crashed into a residential San Diego neighborhood early Thursday morning, killing the people on board and destroying several homes, officials said.

Dan Eddy, San Diego’s assistant fire chief, told a news conference that there had been multiple fatalities, all among people on the plane. The number of people aboard was not immediately known.

The aircraft, a Cessna 550, which Mr. Eddy said carries up to 10 people, crashed in Murphy Canyon near the Tierrasanta neighborhood just before 4 a.m. Multiple homes caught on fire and were destroyed, the San Diego Police Department said.

Residents of the Tierrasanta neighborhood evacuated quickly and there were no reports of serious injuries among people on the ground, Mr. Eddy said.

“We have jet fuel all over the place,” Mr. Eddy said at an earlier news conference shortly after the crash. He described the neighborhood as a “gigantic debris field.”

The plane had been attempting to land at the Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport, across a highway from where it crashed. Officials did not immediately say what had caused the crash.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were investigating.

In October 2021, another small plane en route to the same airport crashed in the town of Santee, northeast of San Diego, clipping a UPS truck and destroying two homes. The driver of the UPS truck and the pilot were killed in that crash.