BEIJING – A passenger plane crashed in an ice-covered lake in northern China seconds after takeoff Sunday, killing all 53 people aboard and one person on the ground after an apparent midair explosion, the government said.
There was no word on the cause of the crash, which was the country’s deadliest in more than two years.
The China Eastern Airlines plane went down in Baotou, a city in the Inner Mongolia region 330 miles northwest of Beijing, “only about a dozen seconds” after takeoff at 8:20 a.m., the official Xinhua News Agency said.
The weather in Baotou was clear and cold – about 25 degrees below zero.
The plane, a Bombardier CRJ-200, was headed for Shanghai with 47 passengers and six crew members when it crashed into the lake in Nanhai Park, Xinhua said.
All CRJ-200 aircraft in China were grounded, and cabinet-level investigators were dispatched to the crash site from Beijing, Xinhua said.
Witnesses told the agency they heard an explosion before the plane hit the ground, and one described seeing “a big fireball” overhead.
One Indonesian was among the passengers killed and the rest were Chinese nationals, the reports said.
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