A Boeing 737 plane crashes in China with more than 130 people on board

By Rachel Elbaum and Livia Liu -

A plane with 132 people on board crashed in southern China on Monday, according to the country's authorities.

The cause of the accident and the number of dead or injured were not immediately known.

The Boeing 737 lost contact over Wuzhou during a flight between the southern cities of Kunming and Guangzhou, according to China Eastern Airlines and the country's Civil Aviation Administration.

Among the 132 people on board were 123 passengers and nine crew members.

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The accident sparked a fire on a mountainside in the southern Guangxi region, state media reported.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has ordered an "all-out" rescue effort, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency.

Ambulances are diverted down a secondary road following the crash of a China Eastern plane in Teng county, Wuzhou city, Guangxi province, on Monday, March 21, 2022.STR / AFPTV/AFP via Getty Images

Rescue teams were dispatched to the crash site, according to local authorities, while the airline and the Aviation Administration also said they had dispatched task forces to the scene.

A fire caused by the accident burned bamboo and trees before being put out, the Reuters news agency reported, citing local media.

NASA satellite data showed a massive fire in the area where the plane went down at the time of the crash.

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The flight, MU5735, left Kunming at 1:11 p.m. (1:11 a.m. Eastern Time), with an expected arrival time less than two hours later, according to data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.

The Boeing 737-89P quickly lost altitude just over an hour into the flight, descending from 29,000 feet in a matter of minutes to its last tracked position.

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China Eastern launched a hotline for families of passengers.

It is one of China's largest airlines, carrying more than 130 million passengers a year, according to its website, and has a fleet of 730 planes.

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The plane was delivered to China Eastern by Boeing in June 2015 and had been flying for more than six years.

Chicago-based Boeing said it was aware of the initial media reports and was working to gather more information.

The last fatal accident of a civil aircraft in the country was in 2010.