Two people have been confirmed dead by US authorities, in a plane crash at San Francisco International Airport, while the rest of the passengers have been accounted for.
San Francisco airport spokesman Doug Yakel said that 182 of the 307 people, 291 passengers and 16 crew, on board the Asiana Airlines flight 214 from Seoul, South Korea, were being treated in local hospitals.
Of the 182 injured people taken to hospitals, at least 49 were in critical condition late Saturday. The remaining 133 had minor to moderate injuries, while many of the other passengers or crew members had more minor injuries that didn’t require extra treatment.
Thirty of the passengers were children.
US officials examined flight information recorders and began investigating the crash and said that there was no immediate indication of the cause of Saturday’s accident but Asiana said mechanical failure did not appear to be a factor.
Some eyewitnesses said the aircraft seemed to lose control and that the tail may have hit the ground.
China Central Television said on Sunday evening that the two victims who died were students at Jiangshan Middle School in China’s eastern Zhejiang province citing a fax from Asiana Airlines.
The two students were identified as Ye Mengyuan and Wang Linjia. The airline said the two victims were 16 years old.
Asiana is a South Korean airline, second in size to national carrier Korean Air. It has recently tried to expand its presence in the US, and joined the Star Alliance, which is anchored in the US by United Airlines.
The crash on Saturday is the airline’s first fatal accident in 20 years, when a Boeing 737 crashed into a mountain in the southwest of South Korea in 1993 killing 68 people.
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