Awful news in Taipei, Taiwan this evening, where a commercial TransAsia flight crashed into the Taipei harbor after crashing into the highway. The BBC reports that the ATR-72 twin-engine turboprop had just taken off with passengers from Taipei’s Songshan Airport and was headed to Kinmen Airport on the other side of Taiwan. Via the BBC:
More than 50 people were onboard the domestic flight, and a number of people were reportedly injured.
Some reports said there were several people trapped inside the plane in need of rescue.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA) showed a picture of a plane almost submerged in the Keelung river.
An incredible sequence of images started making the rounds on Twitter late Tuesday night when it was discovered that a dashcam from a car on the highway recorded the terrifying scene:
#Transasia #ATR72 – dashcam via @Missxoxo168 correlates w/wider pics of scene. Bloomberg: http://t.co/BOpbjokhfa pic.twitter.com/5AliUZ5TJs
— Tom Grundy (@tomgrundy) February 4, 2015
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Here’s the video. It is absolutely surreal.
And here is footage from further away to show that it is, indeed, real:
Awful. Here are some updates from Twitter (via The Verge) on the horrific accident. Thoughts to all those affected by such a tragedy.