Open Editor's Digest for free
Rula Khalaf, editor of the Financial Times, picks her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
At least 80 people were killed on Sunday after a South Korean airliner crashed and caught fire while landing, according to local authorities, in one of the country's worst aviation disasters on record.
The Jeju Air flight was returning from Bangkok with 181 people on board when it failed to deploy landing gear at Muan International Airport in the south of the country.
Of the 175 passengers on board, 173 were South Koreans, while the other two were Thais, according to the Ministry of Transport. There were six other crew members on board.
Local television footage showed the plane sliding down the runway before hitting a wall and bursting into flames. The plane's landing gear appears to have malfunctioned, according to the country's emergency office.
State-run Yonhap News Agency reported that the fire had been contained and two people had been rescued from the wreckage. More than 30 trucks and several helicopters were deployed to the disaster site.
South KoreaActing Philippine President Choe Sang Mok visited the accident site on Sunday and ordered an all-out rescue effort, asking emergency workers to “exert their best efforts in rescue operations and mobilize all available resources.”
An airline spokesman said that the authorities are still working to determine the exact cause of the accident.
Television images showed thick smoke rising from the wreckage of the plane, a twin-engine Boeing 737-800, after it crashed.
Fire officials told Yonhap that most of the passengers were feared dead. In a televised press conference, officials cited the plane's collision with birds and bad weather as possible causes of the accident.
This disaster is the second fatal plane accident in recent days. Azerbaijan Airlines passenger flight Crashed in Kazakhstan On Wednesday, after diverting its course over the Caspian Sea from Grozny in the Chechen Republic, southern Russia.
US and Ukrainian officials blamed Russian anti-aircraft fire for the accident, which killed 38 of the 67 people on board. Russian authorities said heavy fog and a flock of birds caused the plane to be diverted from Grozny, but they also said it happened while Ukrainian fighter drones were attacking nearby cities.
Russian Vladimir Putin apologized to Azerbaijan on Saturday regarding the “tragic incident,” but did not comment on allegations of Russian interference.
