Plane Carrying 132 Passengers Crashes In China, Triggers Mountain Fire

The plane, a Boeing 737 crashed near Wuzhou city in the Guangxi region.

After the crash, a ball of fire could be seen emanating from the site (Twitter/ShanghaiEye)

New Delhi: A passenger plane carrying 132 people crashed in southwest China on Monday, causing a fire on a mountain, reported news agency AFP.

The plane, a Boeing 737 of China Eastern Airlines, had taken off from Kunming and was headed for Guangzhou when it crashed near Wuzhou city in the Guangxi region. The number of casualties are not yet known.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered a probe into the plane crash.

After the crash, a ball of fire could be seen emanating from the site. State broadcaster CCTV reported that the plane crashed in Teng county near Wuzhou and "caused a mountain fire", Reuters reported.

In a statement, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said the flight "lost airborne contact over Wuzhou" city in the Guangxi region. The plane was carrying 123 passengers and 9 flight crew members. Rescue teams have been dispatched to the location. 

A villager told a local news site that the plane had "completely fallen apart" and he had seen nearby forest areas destroyed by a fire that erupted after it crashed onto the mountainside, Reuters reported.

Flight tracker FlightRadar24 showed the plane had sharply dropped from an altitude of 29,100 feet to 3,225 feet in the span of three minutes, before flight information stopped.

The aircraft was delivered to China Eastern from Boeing in June 2015 and had been flying for more than six years.

The tragedy comes even as the safety record of China's airline industry has been among the best in the world over the past decade.

According to Aviation Safety Network, China's last fatal jet accident was in 2010, when 44 people on board were killed when an Embraer E-190 regional jet crashed near Yichun airport due to low visibility.