| Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, November 13, 2001 |
161 Bodies Recovered in AA Flight Crash: Mayor Giuliani |
 Flight 587, an Airbus A300 that can carry 275 passengers, crashed shortly after 9 a.m. (1400 GMT) and thick, black smoke could be seen kilometers away.
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New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said Monday that a total of 161 bodies have so far been recovered in the crash of the American Airline flight 587 in New York this morning.
Initially giving the figure of casualties as 132, he updated later to 161. Six others on the ground were reported missing, he said in his first press conference since the crash occurred about 9:17 am EST.
The plane was an Airbus A-300 passenger jet with 246 passengers on board and nine crew members. It departed from John, F. Kennedy Airport bound for Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. There was no indication of any survivors, police said.
The parts of the jet fell to a residential area with some 30 injuries being treated, Giuliani said.
He said the city "has been in high alert for almost nine weeks and there is no reason for any different things being done now." He referred to the terrorist attacks on September 11, in which two hijacked passenger planes hit and toppled two 110-story towers of the World Trade Center, leaving over 4,000 missing or dead.
He said firefighters and police have done a magnificent job by responding very quickly to the scene.
The investigation is being handled by the NTSB or National Transportation Safety Board in Washington and there is no definitive conclusion on the cause of the incident, he said.
The plane was split into a number of parts, some falling into Jamaica Bay near the JFK Airport, with its main part in Rockaway, where 12 homes were hit, four destroyed and four seriously damaged, the mayor said.
Three major airports in metropolitan New York were closed soon after the incident. However, in early afternoon they started to allow incoming flights, and two airports except the JFK announced departures.
American Airlines Passenge Jet Crashes in New York Flight 587, an Airbus A300 that can carry 275 passengers, crashed shortly after 9 a.m. (1400 GMT) and thick, black smoke could be seen kilometers away.
Black smoke could be seen from the United Nations headquarters in Manhattan.
There was no report of the number of casualties, either on the plane or on the ground.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police said all three New York Area airports, JFK, Newark International Airport and La Guardia, were shut down after the crash.
The city of New York was put on the high state of alert, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said. Fighter jets were seen flying over the area.
Bill Schumann of the Federal Aviation Administration said there was no immediate indication of what caused the crash.
A New York Fire Department spokesman said that 44 units and some 200 firefighters have been dispatched to the crash site.
The crash came two months after the attack on the World Trade Center, which was destroyed by two Boeing 767s hijacked out of Boston's Logan Airport.
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