An American Airlines jet overshot the runway at a Jamaican airport and ended up in a mangled mess on a beach, but all 154 passengers and crew survived with mainly minor injuries.

One of the jet's engines broke off, part of the landing gear smashed and the body of the Boeing 737 cracked as it ploughed through the perimeter fence late on Tuesday, skidded across a road and ended up on the beachfront.

Flight 331 from Miami came to rest just short of the Caribbean Sea at Kingston airport. Stunned passengers staggered out of the aircraft, some with broken bones, cuts and bruises, before being rushed to local hospitals.

The airport was immediately closed and all flights diverted.

"All I know is that the plane landed and fell apart," passenger Betrie Carr-Cameron said, adding that after the jet came to a halt people immediately rushed for the exits, where emergency slides were deployed.

"People were just milling around outside, freaking out," passenger Natalie Morales Hendricks told NBC's Today show. "There was blood... it was a mess, as you can imagine. You could smell jet fuel." Passengers, who had first applauded what appeared to be a safe landing at the popular winter sun destination, said they did not initially realise the plane was skidding across the runway.

"I was looking at the ground trying to see if that was true, and before I knew it, you know, everything was black and we were crashing," recalled Ms Hendricks.

Information Minister Daryl Vaz told CNN that 91 "badly shaken up" people were initially treated in hospital but that none of the injuries were deemed critical. All but two of the passengers were released by early yesterday.

The flight had originated at Washington's Reagan National Airport and stopped in Miami before travelling on to Kingston, where it crash landed at about 10.22 p.m. (0322 GMT yesterday).

Mr Carr-Cameron, the passenger, criticised the airport's emergency response. "We were there for about 20 minutes or more and there was no one there," she said. "What if there was a fire? We would've all died."

A spokesman for American Airlines, however, said that an emergency crew was at the scene within five minutes.

"None of the injuries appear to be life threatening at this point, they are just minor scrapes," he said. "We are investigating what happened exactly."

American Airlines chairman and CEO Gerard Arpey said, "the care of our passengers and crew members remains our highest priority, and we are grateful for the professionalism of our crew members who safely evacuated the aircraft".

Passenger reports said the plane initially seemed to have landed normally but then there was a loud bang before oxygen masks dropped and the fuselage began to crumble.

The airline gave no immediate explanation for the crash and was said to be working with the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Authority to investigate its cause