179 Die In Plane Crash

ALL but two of the 181 people on board a passenger plane were killed when it skidded off a runway at a South Korean airport, slammed into a concrete fence and burst into flames after its front landing gear apparently failed to deploy, officials said yesterday.

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The National Fire Agency said rescuers raced to pull people from the Jeju Air passenger plane at the airport in the town of Muan, about 180 miles south of Seoul.

The Transport Ministry said the plane was a 15-year-old Boeing 737-800 jet that was returning from Bangkok and that the crash happened at 9.03am local time yesterday. A total of 179 people - 85 women, 84 men and 10 others whose genders were not immediately identifiable - died, the fire agency said. Emergency workers pulled two people, both crew members, to safety.