All 112 people aboard a Chinese jetliner that crashed into the sea off China's northeast coast are dead, the airline announced yesterday, as rescuers in boats gave up their search for survivors that had lasted through the night.
The China Northern Airlines plane, on a domestic flight from Beijing, crashed late Tuesday just short of its destination in Dalian, a major port city.
"The 103 passengers and nine crew aboard the airliner all perished," said a letter by the airline that expressed condolences to the families of the dead.
Rescuers have recovered 66 bodies, most of them torn apart in the crash, said Shan Chunchang, deputy director of the national State Administration of Work Safety Supervision. He said a dredge is being used to bring up wreckage submerged under 11m of water.
"Our recovery efforts are made even more difficult because most of the corpses and most of the wreckage disintegrated," Shan said at a news conference.
Authorities said they were still looking for the plane's black box flight data and voice recorders.
The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 went down at 9:40pm about 20km from the Dalian airport after the pilot reported a fire, the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The majority of passengers were Chinese, China Northern said. It said eight of those aboard were foreigners -- three Japanese and one each from Singapore, India, France, Hong Kong and South Korea.
A policeman at an oil pier said he saw the plane flying in low circles just before the crash.
"I saw flame and light in the cabin," said the policeman, who wouldn't give his name. He said the force of the impact was like an "earthquake on the sea" and caused waves that shook patrol boats tied up at the pier.
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
MASSIVE LOSS: If the next recall votes also fail, it would signal that the administration of President William Lai would continue to face strong resistance within the legislature The results of recall votes yesterday dealt a blow to the Democratic Progressive Party’s (DPP) efforts to overturn the opposition-controlled legislature, as all 24 Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers survived the recall bids. Backed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) DPP, civic groups led the recall drive, seeking to remove 31 out of 39 KMT lawmakers from the 113-seat legislature, in which the KMT and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) together hold a majority with 62 seats, while the DPP holds 51 seats. The scale of the recall elections was unprecedented, with another seven KMT lawmakers facing similar votes on Aug. 23. For a