A plane carrying 181 passengers crashed at an airport in South Korea, killing at least 62 people, the country’s fire department said.
The plane ran off the runway and crashed into a wall at the Muan International Airport in the southwest of the country, Yonhap news agency reported.
The Jeju Air plane, which was carrying 175 passengers and six crew members, was returning from Bangkok in Thailand and crashed when it landed.
Two people have been found alive so far and rescue operations are still ongoing, a fire official told Reuters.
Emergency services were trying to rescue people in the tail of the plane, said an airline official.
The passengers on the plane included 173 South Koreans and two Thais, Yonhap reported.
The cause of the crash was not yet known, but local media reported that it may have been caused by birds getting caught in the flight’s systems.
According to the National Fire Agency, the 62 people who died included 37 women and 25 men.
Reuters/YonhapUnconfirmed footage posted on social media of the crash – which happened just after 09:00 local time (00:00 GMT) – showed the plane skidding off the runway and hitting a wall, before part of it burst into flames.
Other images show a large plume of black smoke rising into the sky.
One flight attendant and one passenger have been rescued so far, South Korea’s fire service said in a statement, adding that 80 firefighters and more than 30 fire trucks had been deployed to the crash site.
EPAMuan is about 288 kilometers south of the capital, Seoul.
South Korea’s aviation industry is considered to have a strong safety record.
The crash is the first fatal accident in the history of Jeju Air, one of South Korea’s low-cost airlines, which was founded in 2005.
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