A Taiwanese commercial flight with 53 passengers aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and crashed into a river in the island’s capital of Taipei on Wednesday morning.
Taiwan state media reports 15 dead in crash of passenger flight into Taipei river after takeoff.
Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the rescue, said the missing people were still in the fuselage or had been pulled downriver.
“At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu told reporters at the scene. “Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives," he said.
Taiwanese media posted pictures of the plane in the water several dozen meters from the shore in the Keelung River.
The plane’s wing also hit a taxi, the driver of which was injured, on the freeway just before it crashed into the river, local media reported.
CNA said the flight from Taipei to the outlying island of Kinmen lost contact with flight controllers at 10-55 a.m. and the fuselage landed in the Keelung River near the city’s downtown Sungshan airport.
The plane was identified as a French-made twin-engine turboprop ATR 72 with a two-pilot air crew.
The accident comes just months after a TransAsia ATR-72 crashed while attempting to land on the island of Penghu off Taiwan’s coast, killing 47 people and injuring another 10. Stormy weather and low visibility were suspected as factors in that crash last July.
