UPDATED: Death toll rises in TransAsia plane crash
At least 31 people are now known to have died in a plane crash in Taiwan, which has also left a two year old boy fighting for his life.
TransAisa Airways flight GE235 clipped a bridge and crashed into a river near the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, and the death toll is expected to rise even highr.
In total, 58 people were on board including five crew. More than half of the passengers were Chinese tourists. A Chinese tour guide has been confirmed amongst the dead.
Photographs of the terrifying incident were posted on Twitter (shown here).
The ATR-72 turbo-prop plane has been hauled out of the Keelung River and the flight data and voice recorders recovered. These will help air accident investigators piece together what went wrong.
According to latest reports, rescuers pulled at least 15 injured people from the river but 12 people remain unaccounted for.
The flight had just left Taipei Songshan Airport and was on its way to the Kinmen islands off the coast of the city of Xiamen in southeastern China.
Film footage of the incident, believed to have been taken by other drivers, showed it banking sharply, hitting a taxi and clipping the bridge before crashing into the river.
The taxi driver survived the incident, having passed out in shock.
Last July a TransAsia Airways flight from Kaohsiung, Taiwan, crashed when it attempted to land in bad weather in the Penghu Islands. Of the 54 on board, 48 were killed.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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