BANGKOK, Thailand -- A plane with at least 36 people aboard crashed into a forest on a resort island in the Gulf of Thailand during a rainstorm Wednesday, with 26 people confirmed dead, police said.
Bangkok Airways Flight 125, a 37-seat Dash-8 aircraft carrying 32 passengers and a crew of four, crashed about 6 miles from the airport, said Charan Kuama, a police officer on Samui Island, about 300 miles south of Bangkok.
'The wreckage is scattered, and there are no reports of suvivors,' Charan said. Rescue worker had recovered at least 26 bodies from the forest where the crash occurred, the officer said.
Charan said he had not received reports on the nationalities of the victims, but noted that Samui Island is a popular destination for foreign tourists.
Sources at Bangkok's Don Muang Airport, where the flight originated, said the passengers included 29 foreigners and three Thais, but a passenger list was not immediately available.
Charan said the plane crashed in a rainstorm at about 6:15 p.m., 35 minutes after it was to have landed. The tiny airport on Samui Island is not equipped with radar or other advanced equipment.
A woman answering the telephone at Samui airport said two loud explosions had been heard and that it was feared all aboard the plane had been killed. The person refused to identify herself.
Bangkok Airways is small, privately owned carrier that operates on six internal routes and recently began flights to Phnom Penh in neighboring Cambodia.
In September 1988 a Vietnam Airlines jet crashed in a rainstorm near Bangkok, killing 76 people. Just over a year earlier a Thai Airways plane carrying tourists to Phuket, another southern Thai beach resort, crashed into the sea, killing all 83 people aboard in Thailand's worst aircrash.
