No News Of Survivors In China's Plane Crash Yet; Rescue Efforts Continue

Beijing, Mar 22 (PTI) No survivors have so far been found as the search continued on Tuesday of the scattered wreckage of the China Eastern Airlines flight that crashed in a mountainous area in the country’s south with 132 people on board on Monday.

There is no official announcement here yet on the fate of the 123 passengers and nine member crew as hopes receded about finding any survivors considering the plane crashed and exploded in the mountainous area.

There is no news of the location of black box, which may provide information about the cause of the crash.

The China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737 aircraft, which departed from Kunming and was bound for Guangzhou, crashed into a mountainous area near Molang village in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou at 2:38 pm, causing a mountain fire, according to the regional emergency management department.

No survivors have so far been found, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported on Tuesday.

Boeing said it is cooperating with China Eastern Airlines to probe the crash.

The crash shattered China’s airlines record of over 100 million continuous hours of safe flight as of February 19.

The last domestic fatal air accident was in 2010, when an Embraer passenger plane crashed in Yichun, Heilongjiang province, killing 42 people.

As soon as the plane crashed in the forest area, Chinese officials rushed hundreds of fire brigades as well as rescue teams to find the survivors before the night fell.

(This story has been published from a wire agency feed without any modifications to the text. Only the headline has been changed.)