Officials on a special investigation panel held the first press briefing Wednesday afternoon on the air crash that occurred on Tuesday night off northeast China's Liaoning Province and the post-crash rescue efforts.

By 16:00 hours Wednesday, rescuers had retrieved 66 bodies from the sea near the port of Dalian, and over 40 rescue vessels were continuing to search for wreckage of the plane and the black box, said Shan Chunchang, vice-director of the State Administration of Production Safety.

Other port cities including Yantai and Tianjin, the Chinese Navy and the Ministry of Communications have also sent special rescue ships to facilitate the post-crash rescue, Shan said.

The official urged relatives of those on board the crashed plane to provide more details about their features for easier identification of the bodies.

Regarding the preliminary list of passengers aboard the crashed China Northern Airlines' MD-82 passenger plane that was released earlier Wednesday, Shan stressed that further verification is still underway.

The list suggests that most passengers were travelers from Dalian or other places in Liaoning Province. There were a few employees of Xi'an-Janssen Pharmaceutical Company and the Ministry of Communications.

Also on board the plane were three tourists from Japan, one each from the Republic of Korea, India, Singapore, France and the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

The McDonnell Douglas MD-82 carrying 112 passengers and crew plunged into Dalian Bay less than 10 kilometers (6.215 miles) from the coast at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday, shortly after the pilot reported a fire in the cabin.

The airliner took off at Beijing International Airport at 20:37 and was scheduled to land in Dalian Zhoushuizi International Airport at 21:40.

Sources say the plane was delivered in July 1991, and had flown a total of 26,700 hours by the time it crashed.

Yang Yuanyuan, vice-director of the General Administration of Civil Aviation, was also present at the briefing.

Yang and Shan are both members of the special investigation panel that arrived in Dalian earlier Wednesday to probe into the cause of the crash.

(Xinhua News Agency May 8, 2002)