Police search for bodies of air crash victims on an ice-covered lake in Baotou, Inner Mongolia. Fifty-four people, including a worker on the ground, were killed, after a Shanghai-bound passenger plane crashed yesterday into a frozen lake in Inner Mongolia within seconds of takeoff. -- Xinhua

A Shanghai-bound passenger plane crashed yesterday into a frozen lake in Inner Mongolia within seconds of takeoff, killing all 53 people aboard and a worker on the ground, government sources said.
Three to four of the passengers were Shanghai residents, according to the local office of China Eastern Airlines, the carrier involved in the crash.
The plane, a Bombardier CRJ-200, went down in Baotou after taking off at about 8:20am. It was carrying 47 passengers and six crew members when it crashed into a lake in Nanhai Park "only about a dozen seconds" after it took off, Xinhua news agency said.
There was no immediate word on the cause.
Witnesses told the agency they heard an explosion before the plane hit the ground, and one described seeing "a big fireball" overhead.
Wang yongqiang, who lives near the park, said he saw black smoke billowing from the tail of the plane before it crashed and broke into fiery fragments, Xinhua said. He also heard "a big blast" when the plane was still in the air, the agency said.
A house next to the park was damaged and several boats were scorched, it added.
Police and firefighters broke through the ice on the lake to search for victims as well as the plane's flight data recorders. Divers were called in to help.
State television showed pieces of the burned plane in the lake and emergency workers in small rowboats pushing ice out of their way.
The area is about 540 kilometers northwest of Beijing.
The remains of all the victims were recovered by last night.
All aboard were confirmed dead by government officials in Baotou, and one worker in Nanhai Park was also killed.
One indonesian was among the passengers and the rest were Chinese nationals, according to China Eastern officials.
More than 30 of the victims' family members were flown to Baotou Airport and are staying in a local hotel.
"Judging from the identification card numbers given when the passengers bought their tickets, three to four of the crash victims were Shanghai residents," said Zhang Ming, a local spokesman for the airline.
The plane was due to land at Shanghai's Hongqiao International Airport at 10:55am.
But as the arrival time came and went, fear for the worst began to spread among those waiting for friends and relatives.
"I received a phone call from my friend around 8am, saying everything was OK and the plane would take off soon," one man waiting at the airport told a local TV crew. Anxious people approached the airline's inquiry desk, asking in vain about the reason of delay.
One young woman waiting for her mother began to lose her composure as the minutes ticked by.
When news came that the plane had crashed, a special office was set up inside the Hongqiao Airport to receive the victims' relatives, according to a China Eastern Airlines official.
Last night, the local relatives were staying in Shanghai at a China Eastern Hotel, waiting for a flight to Baotou.
The country's last major crash occurred on May 7, 2002, when a China Northern Airlines MD-82 plunged into the sea off the northeastern port city of Dalian, killing 112 people. Officials blamed the crash on arson by a passenger who had taken out seven life insurance policies.
Yesterday's crash follows the announcement earlier this month that China's aviation industry had recorded more than 5 million hours of safe flying over the past 30 months.
China eastern Airlines Co Ltd said in October that its flight safety record has been spotless for the past 11 years.