News Brief

(IsraelNN.com) More than 90 percent of the passengers and an unknown number of crew members were killed Sunday in a plane crash on the southern Thai resort island of Phuket. Most were tourists, according to Deputy Governor Vorappot Rajsima. "I'm at the airport and the plane is still smoking," he told a Thai television news team.

Some 20 survivors were taken to a nearby hospital, said Phuket mayor Anchalee Vanich Thepabutr. According to a local radio station, seven foreigners were among those taken to the hospital, but none have been identified so far.

The plane, which was carrying 123 passengers, took off from Bangkok and crashed while trying to land in heavy rain on the island, a popular tourist destination for Israelis. Phuket was also one of the areas hit by the mammoth Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004, in which thousands of people were killed.

No information is available yet on whether there were Israelis on the plane.