Fifty-four people have been confirmed dead in a plane crash accident that happened early Sunday morning in Baotou City, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, according to local government sources.

A Bombardier CRJ200 crashed into a park lake in the suburb of Baotou, one minute after it took off towards the eastern China metropolis Shanghai, killing 53 people aboard and one on the ground.

The remains of the victims, including 47 passengers, six crew members and an elderly worker with the Nanhai Park, have all been found, the sources said. The park worker was found dead near a ticket box that was fell by the nosediving plane.

Of the crew, three were pilots, two were stewards and one was security worker, according to China Eastern Airlines Yunnan Branch,to which the crashed plane was reportedly belonged.

Airlines officials said that among the victims, there was an Indonesian passenger.

President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Vice-Premier Huang Ju have shown their concern for the dead and ordered a thorough investigation into the accident and measures to prevent such tragedies.

Salvage work is continuing to search for flight data recorders,the black boxes, and other fragments of the crashed plane from thepark lake full of ice pieces.

CRJ-200, one of the CRJ (Canada Regional Jet) series, is a branch-line civilian aircraft supplied by the Bombardier Aerospacebased in Canada. It accommodates 50 seats.

Seven Chinese airlines, including the China Eastern, Shanghai Airlines and Shandong Airlines, bought 29 Bombardier planes.

It is reported that all of the Bombardier planes in China have been suspended.

The plane, which had been scheduled to fly from Baotou to China's eastern metropolis of Shanghai, crashed into a frozen lake in Baotou's Nanhai Park.

Witnesses said the plane broke into flaming fragments. A house beside the park was damaged by the falling aircraft and several yachts nearby were scorched.

Wang Yongqiang, a resident who lives near Nanhai park was watching local people's wintertime swimming, when he said he was taken aback by a plane plummeting from the sky with thick black smoke coming from its tail section.

The plane seemed to stall for a few seconds and dropped to the lake with an explosion, Wang was quoted by Xinhua as saying.

"Smoke and flames rose to 100 metres in height," he said.

Local firefighters received the report of the accident at 8:24 am, said Guo Tierui, a press official with the Fire Department of Baotou Public Security Bureau.

"When we rushed to the scene, the lake had become a sea of fire and fragments of the aircraft and ice were scattered everywhere," he said.

The man who died on the ground was reportedly a worker at the Nanhai Park. His body was discovered near a park ticket office.

The remains of all 53 victims on the plane were retrieved from the lake. But the flight data recorders, or so-called black boxes, typically installed aboard airliners have not yet been found.

Shortly after the accident was reported, local officials arrived to organize recovery operations.

More than 400 people, including local firefighters, police officers, park staff and a 20-member dive team from Baotou Iron and Steel, a major steel producer based in the city, have joined the effort.

Several hours after the tragedy, an investigative team flew from Beijing to Baotou to handle the case.

Included are Wang Xianzheng, head of the State Work Safety Administration and Wang Changchun, deputy chief of the General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC), according to CAAC officials.

The doomed plane belonged to the airlines' subsidiary in Southwest China's Yunnan Province.

It is the first plane crash that occurred in Inner Mongolia in 45 years, according to the regional work safety administrative office.

By People's Daily Online