Taipei, Taiwan: A Taiwanese flight with 58 people aboard clipped a bridge shortly after takeoff and careened into a river Wednesday in the island's capital of Tapei, killing at least two people, officials said.
Parts of the wrecked fuselage of the turboprop ATR 72 jutted out of the shallow Keelung River just a couple dozen meters (yards) from the shore near the city's downtown Sungshan airport.
Rescuers clustered around the plane in rubber boats.
Aviation authority director Lin Chi-ming told a news conference that two people were killed aboard the TransAsia Airways flight. The country's Central News Agency later said three people had died, and that they were among passengers taken to a hospital. There was no immediate word given on the fate of the remaining people aboard.
CNA said the flight from Taipei to the outlying island of Kinmen lost contact with flight controllers at 10:55 a.m. and the fuselage landed in the Keelung River near the city's downtown Sungshan airport.
It was the second of TransAsia's French-made ATR 72 to crash in the past year. Last July, a flight crashed while attempting to land on the island of Penghu off Taiwan's coast, killing 48 people and injuring another 10. Stormy weather and low visibility were suspected as factors in that crash.
