The New York district where the jet went down was already mourning dozens of victims of the September 11 terror attacks.

A large number of the firefighters and port authority officials killed in the World Trade Centre horror lived in the Rockaway area of the Queens district.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the area had already been hard hit. He said: "I passed a church where I have been for, I think, ten funerals.

"I have been here probably 20 times for funerals and wakes, this is terrible."

Rockaway lies south of John F Kennedy International Airport, and is built along a long finger-shaped peninsula.

A favourite summer resort for New Yorkers, it is also a popular mooring point for yachts.

Yesterday, families were jolted from their beds as the Airbus crashed near their homes. They ran outside with fire extinguishers and garden hoses, trying to fight fires left by debris from the crash.

Smoke rose from the residential streets in the shadow of the flightpath from the airport as police and fire crews raced to the scene.

"The whole house jumped," said John Maroney, 47, who said pieces of the plane fell a few blocks from his home. "That's probably what shook us up from our beds."

Two schools, empty of students for the Veterans' Day holiday, were turned into emergency centres to prepare for the injured.

Mr Maroney said the jet engine fell on to a nearby Texaco petrol station, sparking a fire.

"We were all out there with fire extinguishers and hoses but we couldn't do much," Mr Maroney said.

One resident told how she was baking when she saw the plane crash behind her house.

"It was a huge, loud sound. It seemed so loud that I was like ducking almost,'' she said.

"And then it blew up into a huge fireball and I jumped out the second floor of my house. It was horrible. I ran right across the street first because we were in shock. Then we had to evacuate. It's unbelievable, it's horrible.

''I went over the deck in the front of my house because the back was so hot," said the woman, who was not identified. Asked if she was injured, she said: "I can't really think about that right now.