A plane carrying mostly Chinese tourists has crashed into a river in Taiwan, killing at least 19 people.
Dramatic video footage emerged showing the TransAsia Airways plane clipping a bridge as it came down shortly after take-off from a Taipei airport.
The plane, carrying 58 people, including 31 tourists from the south-eastern Chinese city of Xiamen has broken up and the fuselage is lying half-submerged in the Keelung River. Rescue efforts are ongoing.
TransAsia said it had contacted relatives of all the 22 Taiwanese passengers and was attempting to reach relatives of the Chinese nationals on board.
The BBC’s Cindy Sui in Taipei says the Chinese tourists could have been on their way home as many people come to Taiwan through Kinmen island.
TransAsia chief Chen Xinde offered a “deep apology” in a televised news conference, but said his planes had been “under thorough scrutiny” since mid-2014.
“Both our planes and our flight safety system are following strict regulations, so we also want to know what caused the new plane model to crash, but I don’t want to speculate,” he said.
“We’re asking the public works department for heavy cranes to be deployed in the hope that the body of the plane can be lifted up,” said Wu Jun-Hong, assistant director of Taipei’s fire department.
“At the moment, we think a lot of the trapped people are in the head of the plane.”
The plane’s flight data recorders, also known as black boxes, have been recovered. Footage from the crash site showed them in a car belonging to the rescue services.
Source: BBC
