"None of the 103 passengers and nine crew has survived," said a written statement handed to relatives of those on board the MD-82 airliner which crashed near the city of Dalian on Tuesday night.

The China Northern Airlines plane on a domestic flight from Beijing crashed late Tuesday just short of its destination in Dalian, a major port city.

More than 60 bodies had been pulled from Dalian Bay by Wednesday morning, officials said. Debris in the water included a charred foodservice pushcart broken in half.

"We haven't found any survivors," said a police officer reached by telephone at the Dalian airport. He wouldn't give his name.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 went down at 9:40 pm (1340 GMT) about 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the Dalian airport after the pilot reported a fire.

There were 103 passengers and nine crew members aboard Flight 6136, China Northern said. It said they included one from Hong Kong and seven foreigners -- three Japanese and one each from Singapore, India, France, and South Korea.

It was the second fatal crash in a month of a Chinese airliner and came despite extensive efforts to improve China's air safety.

More than 40 vessels joined the search, the Sea Rescue Center in Dalian said. Fishermen searched through the night using searchlights, joined later by two Chinese naval vessels.

"We sent every boat we could find," said a Dalian port authority official who gave only his surname, Liu. "When they heard the news, fishermen set off in their boats."

State television showed searchers pulling wreckage from the bay, which is six to 12 meters (20 to 40 feet) deep. It included what appeared to be a piece of the plane's tail and bits of broken seats.

Authorities were still looking for the plane's "black box" flight data and voice recorders, said a man who answered the phone at the Sea Rescue Center and wouldn't give his name.

A policeman at an oil pier run by the Dalian Petrochemical Plant said he saw the plane flying in low circles just before the crash.

"I saw flame and light in the cabin," said the policeman, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He said the force of the impact was like an "earthquake on the sea" and caused waves that shook patrol boats tied up at the oil pier.

The crash came at the end of China's weeklong Labor Day holiday, a time when millions of Chinese travel within the country, suggesting that many aboard were returning home for the resumption of business Wednesday morning.

Most of those aboard were residents of Dalian, which is 450 kilometers (280 miles) east of Beijing.

At the Dalian airport, China Northern set aside a lounge for relatives of victims. The airline also set up a reception center in a Dalian hotel, with tables in the lobby for families to register.

China Northern issued a statement expressing its "deepest condolences" to families of the victims and promising to help with an investigation and "fulfill our responsibilities to the deceased."

The central government sent a team of investigators to Dalian from Beijing.

China Northern's only other known fatal accident also involved an MD-82. That plane crashed in 1993 while landing in heavy fog in the northwestern Chinese city of Urumqi. Twelve people were reported killed.

On April 15, an Air China flight from Beijing slammed into a mountain in heavy rain and fog while preparing to land near Pusan, South Korea.

(China Daily May 8, 2002)