US military-contracted plane crashed in a rice field in the southern Philippines Thursday, killing all four people on board, US Embassy and Philippine officials said.

The Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines confirmed the crash of a light plane in Maguindanao del Sur province. It did not immediately provide other details.

The plane that crashed in the southern province was contracted by the US military, US Embassy spokesperson Kanishka Gangopadhyay told The Associated Press, adding that the US Indo-Pacific Command will issue a more detailed statement on the plane crash.

The bodies of four people who appeared to be foreign nationals were retrieved from the wreckage in Ampatuan town, said Ameer Jehad Tim Ambolodto, a safety officer of Maguindanao del Sur.

Windy Beaty, a provincial disaster-mitigation officer, told the AP that she received reports that residents saw smoke coming from the plane and heard an explosion before the aircraft plummeted to the ground less than a kilometre from a cluster of farmhouses.

Nobody was reported injured on or near the crash site, which was cordoned off by troops, Beaty said.

A water buffalo on the ground was also killed as a result of the plane crash, local officials said.

US forces have been deployed in a Philippine military camp in the country's south for decades to help provide advice and training to Filipino forces battling Muslim militants. The region is the homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation.