China plane crash: Human remains found after Boeing 737 with 132 people on board smashed into mountains

Rescue teams find human remains along with identity and bank cards and wallets

Human remains have been found by search teams scouring the crash site of the Boeing 737-800 airplane that nosedived mid-flight in Guangxi province of China on Monday.

Rescue teams found human tissue around the aircraft wreckage after scanning a total 46,000 sq metres as of Wednesday evening, reported state-run Global Times.

Wallets, identity, and bank cards have been recovered from the site as well.

The material has been sent to an investigation team, officials were quoted as saying on Wednesday night.

The search area was expanded to locate the plane’s second black box, which is key to figuring out why the plane unexpectedly nosedived into the mountainous area an hour after it had departed.

Officials had earlier on Wednesday announced the discovery of one of the black boxes, later identified by them as the cockpit voice recorder (CVR).

Zhu Tao, director of the aviation safety office of the Civil Aviation Authority of China, said the CVR looked badly damaged from the outside, but its storage unit was relatively intact.

If the black box’s internal memory unit has been damaged, it may take longer to decode, he added.

The China Eastern plane was carrying 132 people from Kunming, the capital of Yunnan province, to Guangzhou in Guangdong province.

The plane was about an hour away from its destination when it suddenly nosedived from cruising altitude, dropping 29,000ft in around two minutes and crashing into hills outside the city of Wuzhou.

No survivors from the crash have been reported, with all those on board the flight feared died.

Some details about the passengers have begun to emerge through local reports.

A man who goes by the pseudonym Wang Baiyang said his 26-year-old sister, her husband and their 18-month old daughter were onboard and that it had been their first-ever flight, reported China Youth Daily.

“For the past two days, I felt like I had a dream, and I always felt that when I woke up the next day, my sister would call me,” he was quoted as saying.

“I didn’t think it was real at all, first my grandfather died, and then I heard the news of the flight, and I just froze there and tried to reach my sister through the phone.”