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Rescuers scouring a remote Chinese mountainside Tuesday discovered charred personal belongings from the wreckage of the China Eastern plane that mysteriously fell from the sky — but still no sign of any survivors.
Wallets, bank cards and official identity cards have been among the items so far located near the crash site of China Eastern Flight 5735 in the southern region of Guangxi, China’s state media said.
Small pieces of the Boeing 737-800 plane that crashed a day earlier near the city of Wuzhou have also been found scattered throughout the mountainside.
Search teams were using their hands, picks, sniffer dogs and drones to look for survivors on both sides of the mountain into which the plane crashed.
Local media and authorities haven’t revealed whether any human remains have been found.
The flight had been carrying 132 people on board when it plummeted 30,000 feet and burst into a huge fireball, the airline said.
No foreigners were on board the flight, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s preliminary review.
The scope of the debris field had so far complicated the search for the plane’s black box, which holds the flight data and cockpit voice recorders.
China’s aviation regulator on Tuesday was already predicting that the crash investigation would face a “very high level” of difficulty due to the severe damage to the aircraft.
Rescue officials had earlier revealed that Flight 5735 had disintegrated upon impact.
The flight was traveling at 30,000 feet when it suddenly started to nosedive at about 2:20 p.m. Monday.
Horrifying footage captured the doomed plane’s free fall toward the ground, and the subsequent fiery crash was large enough to be seen on NASA satellite images.
The flight had taken off from the city of Kunming and was en route to Guangzhou.
Family members of those on board gathered at both Kunming and Guangzhou airports on Tuesday awaiting news of their loved ones.
Chinese officials have already described the crash as the country’s worst air disaster in nearly a decade.
With Post wires
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