A Chinese plane with 132 people on board has crashed in a forested hillside in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou, southern China.
By Eugene Onyeji
No fewer than 132 passengers onboard a Chinese passenger plane are feared dead.
The Boeing 737 aircraft of China Eastern Airlines, which flew from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed in Tengxian County in the city of Wuzhou, before bursting into flames, with thick smoke billowing into the skyline with the debris of the plane scattered all over the place
The 132 people included 123 passengers and nine crew members, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on its website.
Following the accident, videos and pictures purporting to come from the scene started circulating on social media showing smoke billowing from a hillside and wreckage on the ground.
The airline said it deeply mourned the passengers and crew, without specifying how many people had been killed.
China Eastern said the cause of the crash, in which the plane descended at 31,000 feet a minute according to flight-tracking website FlightRadar24, was under investigation.
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The airline said it had provided a hotline for relatives of those on board and sent a working group to the site.
There were no foreigners on the flight, Chinese state television reported, citing China Eastern.
President Xi Jingping has ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash.
Emergency responders including firefighters are currently at the scene of the crash.