No Survivors In China Crash

All 112 people aboard a jetliner that crashed into the sea off China's northeastern coast are dead, the airline announced Wednesday as rescuers in boats gave up a search for survivors that had lasted through the night.

The China Northern Airlines plane on a domestic flight from Beijing crashed late Tuesday just short of its destination in Dalian, a major port city.

"The 103 passengers and nine crew aboard the airliner all perished," said a letter issued by the airline that expressed condolences to the families of the dead.

The announcement brought wails of grief from family members who had been put up by the airline in hotels in the northeastern city of Dalian since the crash.

"There's no more hope left. The airline told us all of them went down in the sea," said Dalian resident Wang Jingao, whose wife Liu Meina, 47, was aboard the flight.

He trailed off, his voice cracking.

"They are all gone. We are all very sad. We never imagined that this would ever happen," said Tang Yucheng, 62, who lost his long-time friend Liu Qi.

One man shouted that he had lost four of his sons in the crash.

"How can this happen twice?" he said, referring to the April crash of a Chinese airliner.

Rescuers have recovered 66 bodies, most of them torn apart in the crash, said Shan Chunchang, deputy director of the national State Administration of Work Safety Supervision. He said a dredge is being used to pick up wreckage submerged under 36 feet of water.

"Our recovery efforts are made even more difficult because most of the corpses and most of the wreckage disintegrated," Shan said at a news conference.

Authorities said they were still looking for the plane's "black box" flight data and voice recorders.

A flotilla of ships was pulling corpses from the sea on Wednesday.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 went down at 9:40 p.m. local time, about 12 miles from the Dalian airport after the pilot reported a fire, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The majority of passengers were Chinese, most of whom lived in Dalian, China Northern said. It said eight of those aboard were foreigners — three Japanese and one each from Singapore, India, France, Hong Kong and South Korea.

It was the second fatal crash in a month of a Chinese airliner and came despite extensive efforts to improve China's air safety after a string of fatal accidents in the 1990s.

An Air China plane crashed into a mountain April 15 near Busan, South Korea. South Korean officials say pilot error might be to blame.

More than 40 vessels joined the search in Dalian, the city's Sea Rescue Center said. Fishermen searched through the night using searchlights, joined later by two Chinese naval vessels.

"We sent every boat we could find," said a Dalian port authority official. "When they heard the news, fishermen set off in their boats."

A policeman at an oil pier run by the Dalian Petrochemical Plant said he saw the plane flying in low circles just before the crash.

"I saw flame and light in the cabin," said the policeman, who wouldn't give his name. He said the force of the impact was like an "earthquake on the sea" and caused waves that shook patrol boats tied up at the oil pier.

The crash came at the end of China's weeklong Labor Day holiday, a time when millions of Chinese travel within the country, suggesting that many aboard were returning home for the resumption of business Wednesday morning.

Dalian is about 280 miles east of Beijing.

Families haven't been allowed to see bodies yet for identification, said Shan, the safety official.

"Most of the corpses were dismembered. This is making our recovery and identification work extremely difficult," he said.

Shan was among a group of investigators and safety officials sent to Dalian by China's cabinet, underscoring the emphasis the central government has given on airline safety.

China Northern's only other known fatal accident also involved an MD-82. That plane crashed in 1993 while landing in heavy fog in the northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi. Twelve people were reported killed.

China's airline industry suffered a series of fatal crashes in the 1990s, prompting a major campaign to improve safety. The government has spent heavily on new aircraft, pilot training, air traffic control systems and safety services.

The effort paid off in 2001, when China's airlines went the whole year without a reported fatality.