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Forty-seven people are feared dead after a TransAsia Airways passenger plane crashed while trying to make an emergency landing in tyhoon-hit Taiwan.The domestic flight crashed in stormy weather yesterday at an airport in the city of Magong

“It’s chaotic on the scene,” Jean Shen, the director of the civil aviation authorities, said.

“The fire department was putting out the flames. They will give us the number of casualties very soon. Eleven people injured by the crash were taken to a hospital, the government said.

Taiwan’s Central News Agency cited the the Civil Aviation Administration as saying the flight crashed with 54 passengers and four flight crew and was operated by TransAsia Airway, a Taiwanese airline.

Typhoon Matmo hit Taiwan on Wednesday with heavy rains and strong winds, shutting financial markets and schools.

TransAsia Airways is a Taiwan-based airline with a fleet of 23 mostly Airbus aircraft, flying chiefly on domestic routes, but with some flights to Japan, Thailand and Cambodia among its Asian destinations.

Meanwhile, pro-Russian rebels have shot down two Ukrainian ground attack jets in eastern Ukraine, a Ukrainian military spokesman has said, just days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17.

“Two Sukhoi Ukrainian fighter jets have been shot down.  The fate of the pilots is not known,” spokesman Oleksiy Dmytrashkivsky said on Wednesday, adding that the planes were brought down about 25km from the crash site of MH17.

But a second military spokesman said the jets had been shot down at a different location and that the pilots managed to parachute out, he said.

“Today in the south of the Luhansk region close to the village of Dmytrivka, pro-Russian fighters shot two Su-25 jets from a missile system,” spokesman Vladislav Seleznev said. — AFP