Two people have died and four more injured after an Indian naval aircraft crashed during an acrobatics display in the southern city of Hyderabad.

Police said the plane came down in a residential neighbourhood of the city on Wednesday.

Indian TV news channels showed the plane flying in a formation at the air show shortly before it crashed into densely populated land adjacent to the show ground.

"In the final phase, the aircraft appears to have gone out of control. They crashed into a building and the pilots have died," Nirmal Verma, a navy chief, said.

He was unable to say if there were further casualties on the  ground.

But Prerna Suri, Al Jazeera's India correspondent, said the state police department had confirmed the two deaths and four injured.

"The Indian army, the state police and the fire department have been deployed to comb the area for survivors," she said.

"It was a very crowed area so the casualty count is expected to go up.

"The aircraft was manned by two pilots, both have been declared dead.

Investigation

Suri said the cause of the crash was not known yet, but that an investigation was already underway.

"There are a lot of questions being asked about how an air show could be held so close to a very crowded residential area, so close to the airport," Suri said.

The crash came on the opening day of the India Aviation 2010 exhibition, a five-day civil aviation exhibition.

The plane, a two-seater Kiran MK-II built by state-run Hindustan Aeronautics, was part of a four-plane formation.

In January 2009 a similar aircraft went down in the southern state of Karnataka, killing its lone pilot.