Rescuers found only personal belongings, such as mud-stained wallets and bank cards, but no survivors on a mountainside in southern China where a plane with 132 people on board crashed on Monday.
The China Eastern aircraft inexplicably fell from the sky and burst into a fireball, causing a fire in the area.
Videos from local television stations show small pieces of the plane and the crash site.
Relatives and friends of the people on board the plane, which was making a regional flight between the cities of Kunming and Guangzhou, gathered at the airports of these cities waiting for news about their loved ones.
At the accident site, rituals were also performed in honor of the victims.
A woman surnamed Liang, 60, takes part in a Buddhist ceremony honoring the victims in a field near the entrance to Simen village, near the site where a China Eastern Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane crashed. was flying from Kunming to Guangzhou, in Wuzhou. CARLOS GARCIA RAWLINS / REUTERS
Authorities are still investigating what caused the Boeing 737-800 to go into a steep nosedive near the city of Wuzhou as it was about to start landing.
The search for the black boxes containing the flight data and cockpit voice recorders is made difficult by the fact that the accident occurred in a remote mountainous area that is only accessible by foot or motorcycle.
