Forty-three dead in China plane crash

BEIJING // A Chinese passenger plane crashed and burst into flames while attempting to land in northeast China on Tuesday, killing 43 people on board, the same day that a German plane crashed in heavy rain in Nepal, killing 14 people. The Henan Airlines plane overshot the runway while trying to touch down at an airport in the city of Yichun in remote Heilongjiang province, the official Xinhua news agency said. Hua Jingwei, an official with the Communist Party in Yichun, told Xinhua that 43 bodies had been recovered from the wreckage and 53 survivors taken to hospital for treatment. Hua said the plane broke into two pieces as it approached the runway, Xinhua reported, and some passengers were thrown out of the cabin before the jet hit the ground. There were 91 passengers, including five children, and five crew on board, Xinhua said, citing a source at the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC). The crash occurred near Yichun's Lindu airport, around 40 minutes after the plane took off from Harbin, the provincial capital, Xinhua said. Television images showed teams of firefighters using hoses to douse the blazing wreckage of the aircraft. Wang Xuemei, the vice mayor of Yichun who oversaw the rescue efforts, said most of the survivors taken to hospital had suffered broken bones. The aircraft was an E-190 jet, a passenger aircraft manufactured by Brazilian aerospace conglomerate Embraer. A spokesman for the constructor said the company did not yet have "an official position" on the accident. The cause of the crash was still unclear and work teams searched through the wreckage for the plane's black box flight data recorder. Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang led a team of transport, safety and security officials to Yichun to deal with the aftermath of the crash and begin investigation work, Xinhua said. The CAAC has also sent a 20-strong group of technicians and officials to the scene, it said. Lindu airport is in a forest around 9km outside of central Yichun, a city of one million inhabitants around 150km from the border with Russia. Henan Airlines, based in the central province of the same name, launched the Yichun-Harbin service a year ago and operated the route three times a week, Xinhua said. The carrier was previously known as Kunpeng Airlines and is run by Shenzhen Airlines, based in the southern city of the same name. The crash came a week after a North Korean military aircraft came down on a house in Liaoning province, also in China's northeast, killing the pilot. Earlier on Tuesday, a small passenger plane heading to the Mount Everest region crashed in heavy rain outside Nepal's capital, Katmandu, killing all 14 people aboard, including four Americans, a Briton and a Japanese national, officials said. The private Agni Air plane went down near Shikharpur village, about 80km south of Katmandu, area police chief Ram Bahadur Shrestha said. The German-built Dornier turboprop airplane was carrying 11 passengers and three crew members. It was headed to Lukla - a popular stop for trekkers and mountaineers - when cloud cover there forced it to turn back to the capital. Ram Bahadur Gole, a villager who witnessed the accident, told Avenues Television network that the crash impact broke the plane into several pieces that were scattered on a hillside. Tri Ratna Manandhar of the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal confirmed there were no survivors. * Agence France-Presse