JAKARTA - An Indonesian military transport plane crashed into a hotel and houses in the northern Sumatra city of Medan on Tuesday, killing at least 30 people, an official said.

"The latest information we have is that 30 have died.... The number could go up," Hisar Turnip, a spokesman for Indonesia's search and rescue agency, told Reuters. It was not immediately clear how many of the victims were in the plane or on the ground.

The plane was on its way from an air force base in Medan to the remote Natuna islands and crashed a few minutes after takeoff.