Neither official would give his name, as is common among Chinese bureaucrats.

The newspaper Ta Kung Pao said Monday the crash was the People's Liberation Army's worst-ever aviation disaster, although that was impossible to confirm due to the intense secrecy surrounding China's military.

The paper, along with another Beijing-supported publication, Wen Wei Po, said 35 of those killed were electronics experts and that the five other victims were the plane's crew.

If true, the crash could mark a serious setback to China's attempts to develop greater self-sufficiency in high-tech armaments for which it is now heavily dependent on Russia and other foreign suppliers.

The newspapers didn't identify the exact model of aircraft, although Ta Kung Pao ran an accompanying article discussing the KJ-2000 plane.

China is developing the early warning aircraft using a Russian frame but outfitted with powerful homemade radar and electronic sensors. The planes are reportedly undergoing testing in Nanjing, a city about 150 kilometres north of the crash site.

In an apparent indication of the seriousness of the incident, state media said investigators were immediately sent to the crash site under orders from the president. Gen. Guo Boxiong, the vice chairman of the Communist Party commission that oversees the military, is heading up the investigation, the Xinhua News Agency said.

Villagers contacted by telephone said they heard a boom and then saw thick black smoke billowing from the crash site amid bamboo forests about 200 kilometres southwest of Shanghai.

Wreckage and bodies were strewn all over the area, the villagers said.

State media has reported few details about the accident, other than to say a military plane crashed in Anhui province, where Guangde is located, killing 40 people.

Such accidents usually go unreported by the Chinese media, although the announcement in 2003 of a submarine accident that killed 70 sailors appeared to mark a step toward greater openness.

However, the tendency toward secrecy remains strong. Three years after the submarine accident, its cause and exact location have never been made public.

Humala, 43, a left-wing populist, appeared to have conceded defeat at a news conference on Sunday. However, on Monday his spokeswoman emphatically denied that Humala had acknowledged Garcia's victory.

"We are waiting for the results," Cynthia Montes told reporters in Lima. "We have won. We have changed the political scenario of the nation."

Electoral officials said Garcia's margin of victory would likely be reduced slightly, once ballots are included from rural areas where reporting is slower.

Outgoing President Alejandro Toledo has asked both candidates to abide by the results of the vote.

Garcia served as Peru's president from 1985 to 1990. During this election campaign, he portrayed himself as a left-of-centre democrat.

When news of his victory broke, he waved a white handkerchief - a traditional victory symbol of his APRA party - as fireworks filled the sky and thousands of supporters gathered outside his campaign headquarters in Lima.

Garcia said his victory was also a defeat for Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, who had backed his opponent.

"The majority of the country has delivered a message in favour of national independence, of national sovereignty," Garcia said.

He went on to say the voters had "defeated efforts by Hugo Chavez to incorporate us in the expansion strategy of his military and backward-looking model, which he's tried to implant in Latin America."

Garcia has come under considerable criticism for his first presidency, a time that some say was marked by economic ruin, rebel violence and accusations of rights abuses.

The militia declared the victory through radio broadcast, but this has yet to be verified as a result of chaos in the city of the Horn of Africa nation, which had been in anarchy since 1991, when warlords overthrew the last government.

The battle between the militia and the warlord alliance has escalated in recent months. The UN-backed interim government, which was set up in Kenya in 2004 and now based in Baidoa, 250 kilometers from Mogadishu, has accused Washington of funding the alliance and contributing to instability.

The United States, which accuses the Islamists of harboring extremists, including Al-Qaeda members, has said it were "wrongly blamed" for the fighting but has refused to confirm or deny the allegation.