Airliner crashes with 132 aboard

BEIJING (AP):

A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country’s worst air disaster in nearly a decade.

More than seven hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said in a statement that the crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. The flight was travelling from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial centre of Guangzhou along the east coast, it added.

China Eastern flight 5735 had been travelling 455 knots (523 mph, 842 kph) at around 30,000 feet when it entered a steep dive around 2:20 p.m. local time, according to data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds later.

Local villagers were first to arrive at the forested area where the plane went down and sparked a blaze big enough to be seen on NASA satellite images. Hundreds of rescue workers were swiftly dispatched from Guangxi and neighbouring Guangdong province.

Chinese President Xi Jinping called for an “all-out effort” by the rescue operation as well as for an investigation into the crash and to ensure complete civil aviation safety.