Plane crashes into Taipei river, killing at least 12 as rescue continues

Taiwanese flight with 58 people aboard went sideways, clipped an elevated roadway and careened into a river Wednesday shortly after takeoff from the island's capital of Taipei, killing at least 12 people, local media and officials said.

The death toll was expected to rise as rescue crews cleared the mostly sunken fuselage in the Keelung River a couple dozen metres from the shore. Teams of rescuers in rubber rafts clustered around the wreckage.

The ATR-72-600 prop-jet aircraft was flying on its side, with one wing scraping past Taiwan's busy National Freeway No. 1 just seconds before it plunged into the river, local television images showed. It had taken off from Taipei's downtown Sungshan Airport en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands.

Television footage showed passengers wearing life jackets wading and swimming clear of the river. The crash was the airline's second disaster in the last six months .

Civil aviation officials said the flight took off at 10:53 a.m. and lost contact with controllers two minutes later. Thirty-one passengers were from China, Taiwan's tourism bureau said. Kinmen's airport is a common link between Taipei and China's Fujian province.

Taiwan's Central News Agency said 12 people were killed.

In this image made from Associated Press Television video, passengers are seen on raft boats near the downed plane. (The Associated Press)

Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was co-ordinating the rescue, said the victims were among 27 people pulled from the plane. The remaining people were unaccounted for, and were either were still in the fuselage or had been pulled downriver, he said.

"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."

Rescuers were pulling luggage from an open plane door to clear the fuselage, and Wu said they planned to build a pontoon bridge to facilitate those efforts.

The plane's wing also hit a taxi, the driver of which was injured, on the freeway just before it crashed into the river, Taiwanese broadcaster TVBS reported.

Taiwan's Ministry of National Defence said it had sent 165 people and eight boats to the riverside rescue scene, joining fire department rescue crews.

A TransAsia media office declined comment on possible reasons for the crash, deferring to a news conference scheduled for later on Wednesday. Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration also was also unable to discuss possible causes of the crash.

A plane operated by the same Taipei-based airline crashed in the outlying Taiwan-controlled islands of Penghu last July 23, killing 48 at the end of a typhoon for reasons that are still under investigation.

Wednesday's crash is likely to further hurt the reputation of the 64-year-old airline along with that of the Civil Aeronautics Administration.

Taiwan has had a poor aviation safety record in recent years, including the disintegration of a China Airlines 747 on a flight from Taipei to Hong Kong in 2002, killing 225. In 1998, a China Airlines A300 crashed while trying to land at Taipei's main international airport, killing 196.

In 2000, a Singapore Airlines jetliner taking off for Los Angeles during a storm hit construction equipment on the runway, killing at least 77 people.

The plane involved in Wednesday's mishap was among the first of the ATR 72-600s, the latest variant of the turboprop aircraft, that TransAsia received in 2014.

They are among an order of eight placed by TransAsia in 2012. The aircraft have 72 seats each. The planes are mainly used to connect the capital, Taipei, with smaller cities and islands.

The airline also operates Airbus A320 and A330 planes on domestic and regional services.

ATR is a joint venture between Airbus and Alenia Aermacchi, a subsidiary of Italy's Finmeccanica.

Emergency personnel work after a commercial plane crashed into a river in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2015. The Taiwanese commercial flight with 58 people aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and crashed into a river in the island's capital of Taipei on Wednesday morning. (AP Photo/Wally Santana) (Wally Santana/The Associated Press)