Marwa Shaheen - Beth:

An Eastern China Airlines airliner, with 133 people on board, crashed in southwest China's Guanxi Province, on Monday.

A video spread on social media showed the appearance of thick smoke from the fuselage of the plane, which is between the mountains, after the collision that caused a mountain fire, according to Chinese sources.

China Central Television reported that the crash of the plane, a Boeing 737 belonging to (China Eastern), occurred near the city of Wuzhou.

He added that the authorities sent rescuers to the crash site, and there were no reports of the number of dead and injured so far.

According to local media, the plane took off on flight "MU5735" after the first hour in the afternoon local time (0500 GMT) from the city of Kunming (southwest) heading to Canton at a distance of about 1,300 kilometers.

The plane was heading from Kunming, capital of southwestern China's Yunnan Province, to Guangxi, capital of Guangdong Province, which borders Hong Kong.

China Eastern said the cause of the crash, which plunged at a rate of 31,000 feet per minute according to flight tracking website Flightradar 24, is still under investigation. The airline said it had set up a hotline for the families of those on board the plane and sent a working group to the site.

The plane, which Flightradar 24 said was six years old, was flying at an altitude of 29,100 feet at 0620 GMT.

After two minutes and 15 seconds, the data showed that it had fallen to an altitude of 9,075 feet. After another 20 seconds, its last traceable altitude was recorded at 3,225 feet.

Accidents are relatively rare while in flight, even though they account for the majority of the flight time. Boeing concluded in a report last year that only 13 percent of fatal accidents on commercial flights globally between 2011 and 2020 occurred during the mid-air phase.

The accident caused a shock in China, where the country's president ordered an immediate investigation to find out the causes of the accident. And China Eastern Airlines suspended all its flights using aircraft of the type of the ill-fated plane.

The number of victims and the cause of the crash is not yet known, and it is feared that there will be no survivors, as the competent authorities indicated that there are no indications of any survivors of this tragic accident.