BEIJING: China yesterday mourned two teenage girls killed after a South Korean passenger jet crashed at San Francisco airport as survivors recounted harrowing details of their flight.
Chinese nationals made up 141 of the 291 passengers aboard the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 which burst into flames after it landed short of the runway, injuring 182.
The two girls were middle school students from east China’s Zhejiang province according to a preliminary report, state news agency Xinhua said. Earlier, state broadcaster CCTV said they were born in 1996 and 1997.
The report quoted Asiana Airlines as saying the information was based on their boarding passes but their identities have not yet been confirmed by DNA testing.
It added the two were among a group of 30 students who were flying to the US along with their teachers to take part in a summer camp.
China’s President Xi Jinping offered his condolences to the victims’ families on Sunday and ordered Chinese diplomatic missions to do everything they could to help the survivors, Xinhua reported.
Another group of 30 students and six teachers from China’s northern Shanxi province were also aboard the same flight, it quoted officials as saying.
Yesterday evening the Chinese foreign ministry confirmed the safety of 78 Chinese nationals, Xinhua said. CCTV urged survivors and their loved ones to post information on the online messaging system We Chat so they could find one another.
Social media users mourned the two girls killed on board.
“In a country of families with mostly single children, how can the parents take this?” wrote one on the Chinese microblog Sina Weibo, referring to China’s population-control policy limiting most families to one child.
“Life is supposed to have just started for them,” said another user. “Who knew the journey to the dream would become their last trip?”
Among the survivors were 60 students and several teachers travelling in two groups, with a few suffering injuries and one student unaccounted for, CCTV reported. “When the crash happened we felt we were done for. Equipment and everything was falling on our heads,” a teacher from the northern province of Shanxi told CCTV. AFP
