TAIPEI, Feb. 5 -- Sixteen of the 31 confirmed deaths in Wednesday's TransAsia Airways plane crash in Taiwan were Chinese mainland residents, according to the local disaster response authority.

The Taiwan Aviation Safety Council said on Thursday that it has invited accident investigators from the Chinese mainland to take part in the accident investigation.

A cross-Strait emergency response mechanism has been launched to deal with the accident.

The first group of eight family members of mainland passengers and four travel agency staff arrived in Taipei on Thursday morning. Another 16 family members, accompanied by eight travel agency staff will also arrive Thursday.

A seven-person working group including officials of the Xiamen tourism bureau came to Taipei on Wednesday evening and started to work.

As of 9:45 a.m. on Thursday, the crash had left 31 people dead, 15 injured and 12 missing. All the missing passengers are tourists from the Chinese mainland. Three other mainland passengers were injured.

The ATR-72 aircraft plunged into the Keelung River at 10:55 a.m. on Wednesday after its wing clipped a taxi on an elevated freeway, 10 minutes after takeoff. The taxi was carrying two passengers: a man and a woman.

Flight GE235 was heading for Kinmen from Taipei with 53 passengers on board, including 31 from the Chinese mainland, and five crew. Three of the mainland passengers are known to be children.

The bodies of the captain and two co-pilots have been found, and the plane's two black boxes have been recovered.

Rescue work has been hampered by the murkiness of the Keelung River. Several segments of the plane, including the cockpit, have been raised out of the water.

The mainland passengers were on trips organized by two travel agencies from Xiamen City in Fujian Province, the Taiwan tourism authority confirmed.

The plane had been in service since April 2014 and was subject to a routine safety check last month, according to Taipei authorities.

Since the crash, Taiwan's civil aeronautics authority has decided to conduct safety checks on the island's 22 ATR-72 aircraft before clearing them for flight.

Taipei Songshan Airport had canceled eight local flights, which are all served by ATR-72 aircraft, by 8 a.m. on Thursday, according to the airport's website.

TransAsia announced on Thursday that passengers who wanted to cancel their bookings would have their usual commission fees waived.

This is not the first time that an ATR-72 aircraft has crashed in Taiwan. On July 23, 2014, TransAsia Airways flight GE222 crashed on Taiwan's Penghu Island, killing 48 people.

TransAsia Airways, founded in 1951, was Taiwan's first private airline, mainly focusing on short overseas flights.