Taipei, July 23
A TransAsia Airways plane crashed on its second attempt at landing during a thunderstorm on an island off Taiwan on Wednesday, killing 47 people and setting buildings on fire.

Inconsolable relatives of a passenger on board the crashed TransAsia Airways plane at the Kaohsiung airport in Taiwan on Wednesday. Reuters

The plane, a 70-seat ATR 72, crashed near the runway on the island of Penghu, west of the mainland, with 54 passengers and four crew on board, officials said. No one was killed or hurt in the buildings.

Eleven injured people on the plane were taken to hospital, the government said. The aircraft took off from Taiwan's southern city of Kaohsiung, headed for the island of Makong, but crash-landed in Huxi township of Penghu County, the main island of the chain.

"It was thunderstorm conditions during the crash," said Hsi Wen-guang, a spokesman for the Penghu County Government Fire Bureau. "From the crash site we sent 11 people to hospital with injuries. A few empty apartment buildings adjacent to the runway caught fire, but no one was inside at the time and the fire was extinguished."

About 100 firefighters were sent to the scene, besides 152 military personnel and 255 police, he added. — Reuters