By KEN MORIT­SUGU

BEI­JING (AP) — A Chi­na East­ern Boe­ing 737-800 with 132 peo­ple on board crashed in the south­ern province of Guangxi on Mon­day, of­fi­cials said.

The Civ­il Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Chi­na said in a state­ment the crash oc­curred near the city of Wuzhou in Teng coun­ty. The flight was trav­el­ing from Kun­ming in the west­ern province of Yun­nan to the in­dus­tri­al cen­ter of Guangzhou along the east coast, it added.

There was no im­me­di­ate word on num­bers of dead and in­jured. The plane was car­ry­ing 123 pas­sen­gers and nine crew mem­bers, the CAAC said, cor­rect­ing ear­li­er re­ports that 133 peo­ple had been on board.

Chi­nese Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping called for an “all-out ef­fort” to be made in the res­cue op­er­a­tion, for post-crash arrange­ments to be han­dled ap­pro­pri­ate­ly and po­ten­tial safe­ty haz­ards in­ves­ti­gat­ed to en­sure com­plete civ­il avi­a­tion flight safe­ty.

Peo­ple’s Dai­ly re­ports that 117 res­cuers have al­ready ar­rived at the crash site. Guangxi fire de­part­ment is or­ga­niz­ing 650 res­cuers who are head­ing to the site from three di­rec­tions.

CCTV re­ports that Chi­na East­ern Air­lines set up nine teams with fo­cus­es like air­craft dis­pos­al, ac­ci­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion and fam­i­ly as­sis­tance, and they are head­ing to the site. The CAAC said it had sent a team of of­fi­cials, and the Guangxi fire ser­vice said work was un­der­way to con­trol a moun­tain­side blaze ig­nit­ed by the crash.

Satel­lite da­ta from NASA showed a mas­sive fire just in the area of where the plane went down at the time of the crash.

Calls to Chi­na East­ern of­fices were not im­me­di­ate­ly an­swered. State me­dia said lo­cal po­lice first re­ceived calls from vil­lagers alert­ing the crash around 2:30 p.m. (0630 GMT). Guangxi provin­cial emer­gency man­age­ment de­part­ment said con­tact with the plane was lost at 2:15 p.m. (0615 GMT).

Chica­go-based Boe­ing Co. said it was aware of the ini­tial re­ports of the crash and was “work­ing to gath­er more in­for­ma­tion.” Boe­ing stock dropped over 8% in pre-mar­ket trad­ing ear­ly Mon­day.

Shang­hai-based Chi­na East­ern is one of Chi­na’s top three air­lines, op­er­at­ing scores of do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al routes serv­ing 248 des­ti­na­tions.

Chi­na East­ern’s flight No. 5735 had been trav­el­ing at around 30,000 feet when sud­den­ly, just af­ter 2:20 p.m., the plane en­tered a deep dive at its cruis­ing al­ti­tude speed of 455 knots (523 mph, 842 kph), ac­cord­ing to da­ta from flight-track­ing web­site Fligh­tRadar24.com. The da­ta sug­gests the plane crashed with­in a minute and a half of what­ev­er went wrong.

The plane stopped trans­mit­ting da­ta just south­west of the Chi­nese city of Wuzhou.

The air­craft was de­liv­ered to Chi­na East­ern from Boe­ing in June 2015 and had been fly­ing for more than six years. Chi­na East­ern Air­lines us­es the Boe­ing 737-800 as one of the main work­hors­es of its fleet — of its over 600 planes, 109 are Boe­ing 737-800s.

Chi­na East­ern on­line made its web­site have a black-and-white home­page af­ter the crash.

Boe­ing be­gan de­liv­er­ing the 737-800 to cus­tomers in 1997 and de­liv­ered the last of the se­ries to Chi­na East­ern in 2020. It made over 5,200 of the nar­row-body air­craft, a pop­u­lar, sin­gle-aisle com­muter plane.

The twin-en­gine, sin­gle aisle Boe­ing 737 is one of the world’s most pop­u­lar planes for short and medi­um-haul flights. Chi­na East­ern op­er­ates mul­ti­ple ver­sions of the com­mon air­craft, in­clud­ing the 737-800 and the 737 Max.

The dead­liest crash in­volv­ing a Boe­ing 737-800 came in Jan­u­ary 2020, when Iran’s para­mil­i­tary Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard ac­ci­den­tal­ly shot down a Ukraine In­ter­na­tion­al Air­lines flight, killing all 176 peo­ple on board.

The 737 Max ver­sion was ground­ed world­wide af­ter two fa­tal crash­es. Chi­na’s avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tor cleared that plane to re­turn to ser­vice late last year, mak­ing the coun­try the last ma­jor mar­ket to do so.

Chi­na’s last dead­ly crash of a civil­ian jet­lin­er was in 2010.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­searcher Yu Bing, news as­sis­tant Car­o­line Chen and writer Jon Gam­brell in Dubai, Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, con­tributed.