The crash was caught on the dashcam of a car driving through the bride. It shows the plane clipping a bridge shortly after take-off this morning from Taipei's Sungshan Airport and crashing into the Keelung river. The death toll in the TransAsia Airways flight was expected to rise as rescue crews cleared the mostly sunken fuselage in the Keelung River a couple dozen meters (yards) from the shore. Teams of rescuers in rubber rafts clustered around the wreckage.The ATR 72 prop-jet aircraft was flying on its side, with one wing scraping past Taiwan's National Freeway No. 1 just seconds before it plunged into the river, local television images showed. It was the airline's second French-Italian-built ATR 72 to crash in the past year.
The plane's wings also hit a taxi on the freeway, seriously injuring the driver. Rescue workers are currently at the scene and have been able to pull people alive from the wreckage. But they believe most of the people in front of the plane are like to have lost their lives as they continue rescue efforts. See the dramatic photos and video of the crash after the cut...
The Taiwanese Central Disaster Response Centre issued the statement below about the crash
The plane lost contact at 10.53am on and was found in Keelung river in Taipei. The ministry of transportation contacted the disaster response centre 20 minutes later.
Confirmed on the flight are 53 passengers and five crew members, totalling 58 people. Taipei city rescue teams are in operation, having rescued 16 people who were admitted to a nearby hospital, with two announced dead on arrival.
Several fire engines, ambulances, water craft and almost 170 rescue staff have been dispatched.
Wednesday's flight had taken off from Taipei's downtown Sungshan
Airport en route to the outlying Taiwan-controlled Kinmen islands.
Taiwan's civil aviation authority said 15 people were killed out of 28 pulled from the fuselage and that 30 people were still missing.
Wu Jun-hong, a Taipei Fire Department official who was coordinating the rescue, said the missing people 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.
Another ATR 72 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.
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