Death toll rises to 26 in Taiwan plane crash

At least 26 people died and 15 survived a spectacular crash caught on video of a TransAsia Airways flight that clipped its wing on a bridge after takeoff from the Taiwanese capital Taipei and crashed into a nearby river,USA Today reports.

Seventeen people remained missing and were feared dead.

Taiwanese rescuers used a massive crane to hoist the French-built ATR 72-600 propjet from the shallow river after survivors were brought to safety on rubber rafts or scrambled to the river bank on their own. One injured person was reportedly found in a park along the river, Taiwan News reported.

Dramatic dashcam footage from vehicles on an elevated highway shows the plane banked sharply left after taking off, just missing apartment buildings. Its left wing clipped the side of the highway, and a taxi on the bridge was rocked by the plane before it crashed into the river.

Rescuers rushed to the scene, where a large portion of the wrecked fuselage jutted out of the shallow Keelung River. Emergency personnel in rubber dinghies crowded around what remained of the plane before it was lifted from the water.

Wu Jun-Hong, a Taipei Fire Department official coordinating the rescue, said those unaccounted for are either still in the wreckage or were pulled downriver. “At the moment, things don’t look too optimistic,” Wu said. “Those in the front of the plane are likely to have lost their lives.”

More than half of the 53 passengers and five crewmembers aboard Flight 235 en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands were from China. Relatives and friends on Kinmen, which is close to China, gathered at the airport to await news.

A plane from Taiwan with 58 people aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and careened into a river Wednesday. Early reports say at least 8 people are known dead and at least two dozen were rescued.

A Taiwanese family of three survived after the father rescued his wife and son from the river water that flooded the plane, said Hong Kong’s Apple Daily. Lin Mingwei, 38, performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on Lin Riyao, 2, and massaged his chest.

“I absolutely can’t lose him again,” Lin said of the boy who spent over 100 days in hospital after a premature birth. The child was in intensive care Wednesday after swallowing a lot of river water. His mother Jiang Yuyin suffered several bone fractures.

Kinmen County Magistrate Chen Fuhai had a lucky escape when his meetings Wednesday in Taipei forced a delay to a later flight, the Apple Daily reported. Chen visited the Taiwanese capital to discuss the next round of top-level cross-strait talks between Taiwan and China, which will take place Saturday in Kinmen.

There were also tragedies. Victims included Wang Qinghuo, a mainland Chinese tour guide in his mid-20s, who was returning to his home city of Xiamen to get married on Sunday, the Xiamen Daily newspaper reported.

Video from a driver’s dash camera captures the moment a turboprop plane with 58 people on board crashes into a Taipei river. Rough cut. (No reporter narration) Video provided by Reuters Newslook

Wednesday’s flight took off from Taipei’s downtown Sungshan Airport. Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration described the ATR72-600 model as its best plane and said the pilot had 4,900 hours of flying experience.

TransAsia director Peter Chen said contact with the plane was lost four minutes after takeoff. He said weather conditions were not a factor and the cause of the accident had not been determined.