By Enyichukwu Enemanna
At least 120 persons have been killed after a passenger plane caught fire, skidding off a runway, and crashing at an airport in South Korea’s Muan city, the country’s National Fire Agency announced.
The accident was said to have occurred at 9.03am local time (00:03 GMT) on Sunday as the Jeju Air flight, carrying 175 passengers and six crew from the Thai capital Bangkok, landed at Muan International Airport located about 289km southwest of the capital Seoul.
The National Fire Agency confirmed that 120 people, comprising 57 women, 54 men and nine others have been killed, and two people have been rescued both of whom are crew members.
The agency announced that it had put off the fire that engulfed the plane.
Hopes are fading for survivors, state news agency Yonhap announced, citing fire agency.
“There seems to have been some kind of malfunction with the landing gear and images which have been on the media here do appear to show the plane landing on its belly, skidding along the runway, followed then by a huge explosion,” Al Jazeera quoted its reporter in Seoul as saying.
“Eyewitness accounts have talked then about a series of explosions and certainly images that we have been seeing have shown a catastrophic fire,” it says.
The plane, a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet, was reported to be carrying two Thai passengers and the rest were believed to be South Koreans.
Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has expressed deep condolences to the families of the crash victims.
Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has been ordered an investigation to ascertain if Thai passengers were on the plane and to provide “assistance immediately”, the prime minister said in a post on social media.
The Yonhap news agency reports that the crash is believed to have been caused by “contact with birds, resulting in malfunctioning landing gear” as the plane attempted to land at the airport.
Another news agency reported that a passenger texted a relative to say a bird was stuck in the plane wing. The person’s final message was, “Should I say my last words?”
The country’s Acting President Choi Sang-mok has ordered “all-out efforts for rescue operations” at Muan airport.
“All related agencies… must mobilise all available resources to save the personnel,” he told officials in a statement.
