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The accident occurred when a Jeju Air flight from Bangkok, Thailand, arrived at the Muan International Airport in South Korea.
At least 47 people were reported dead when a passenger plane skidded off its runway and crashed at the airport in the South Korean city of Muan, according to reports.
The accident occurred on Sunday morning when Jeju Air flight 7C2216, carrying 175 passengers and six crew members from the Thai capital Bangkok, arrived at the Muan International Airport in the south of the country, reported South Korean media Yonhap.
Citing fire authorities, Yonhap news agency said 47 people died in the accident. The news agency also reported that two people were found alive.
Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride, reporting from South Korea’s capital, Seoul, said there was a major rescue operation at the airport in the southwest of the country.
“This was a night flight returning from Bangkok. It appears that there is a malfunction of the landing gear and the images that have appeared in the media here seem to show the plane landing on its belly, skidding on the runway, followed by a huge explosion,” said McBride.
“Eyewitness accounts spoke at the time of a series of explosions and certainly the images we were seeing showed a catastrophic fire,” he said.
One photo shared by local media showed thick clouds of black smoke billowing from the plane. Another showed part of the plane’s tail on fire in what appeared to be a road, with firefighters and emergency vehicles nearby.
South Korean Vice President Choi Sang-mok, meanwhile, ordered “all-out rescue efforts” at Muan Airport.
“All agencies involved… must gather all available resources to save the workers,” he told officials in a statement.
The crash is believed to have been caused by “contact with birds, which resulted in the landing gear not working” as the plane attempted to land at an airport in the southwest of the country, Yonhap reported.
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