A China Southwest Airlines aircraft exploded in mid-air yesterday near the eastern city of Wenzhou killing all 64 people on board and scattering body parts across the ground.
The Tupolev-154 was flying from Chengdu in the south-western province of Sichuan to the eastern city of Wenzhou, and was carrying 51 passengers and 13 crew, an airport official said.
The massive fireball was the latest in a string of Asian crashes and the worst aviation disaster in China - which generally has a good air safety record - since June 1994, when a Northwest Airlines Tupolev-154 crashed after take-off near Xian, in central China, killing 160.
Witnesses in the small township of Gexia, some 15 miles southwest of Wenzhou airport said body parts had been scattered over a large area of countryside after the plane exploded on final approach to the airport.
A Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) spokesman said an emergency investigation team had been dispatched to the site of the wreckage but it was not yet clear whether the explosion was caused deliberately or by accident.
Airport officials said Flight SZ 4509 exploded as it was coming in to land at Wenzhou airport around 4:30 on Wednesday afternoon (08.30 GMT).
A doctor from the nearby Rui'an city hospital, said two farmers had been slightly injured, but there were no deaths on the ground.
Eyewitnesses said there had been a huge explosion, a fireball had fallen from the sky and pieces of wreckage were still burning four hours after the explosion.
The aircraft took off from the south-western city of Chengdu at 2.20 p.m for Wenzhou and was flying over Gexia township in the Wenzhou area at around 4:30 p.m. (8.30 a.m. Irish time) when it lost contact with air traffic control.
"We lost contact and then we heard the signal 110 which meant that the plane had exploded," the airport official said.
He had no details of the nationalities of the passengers on board.
"The weather around 4.30 p.m. was very clear. Visibility was good and the sun was shining," a local official said.
China Southwest Airlines is one of some 20 domestic carriers formed by a break-up of the CAAC. Chinese aviation officials have been trying to replace ageing Ilyushin and Tupolev airliners in the national fleet.
The disaster came as the state announced it is to spend $1.2 billion upgrading its air traffic control system and establishing 10 regional control centres.