No details were available about the cause of the crash, which occurred "in the Rovaniemi airport area" around 11:00 am (0800 GMT), the military said.

"The pilot, who escaped in an ejection seat, has been taken to a health facility for further examination. There are no injuries on the ground related to the plane crash," it said in a post on X.

Dark smoke could be seen rising from the scene and several emergency vehicles were dispatched to the area.

Witness Mika Lehtiniemi saw the fighter jet in the sky just before the crash as he drove along a nearby bridge.

He told Finnish broadcaster YLE it was flying unusually low over the Syvasenvaara residential area before it appeared to stall, its nose turning upwards.

"The plane stood up very strongly and turned on its back, as it were. Then a few seconds passed and I saw a cloud of black smoke. I didn't see the fire, (just) the black horrible smoke," he said.

Airport operator Finavia told AFP it did not expect civilian flights to be affected by the accident for the time being, with the next flight not expected for several hours.

Police were cordoning off the area to make way for rescue operations, said police inspector Jouni Koivunen.

"An investigation will be launched together with the Air Force once those rescue operations have been completed," he told AFP.

A Nordic defence ministers' meeting was taking place in Rovaniemi on Wednesday. The ministers had been due to observe training exercises, but that was cancelled after the accident.

The Finnish air force's fleet of F/A-18 Hornets were delivered by Boeing between 1995 and 2000 and are due to be decommissioned by 2030, replaced by F-35s from rival US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

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