AKIPRESS.COM - Taiwanese rescue officials refused to give up hope of finding 12 people still missing on Thursday more than 24 hours after a TransAsia Airways plane crashed into a Taipei river, killing at least 31, reports Reuters.

TransAsia Flight GE235, carrying 58 passengers and crew, lurched between buildings, clipped a taxi and an overpass with one of its wings and crashed upside down into shallow water shortly after take-off from a downtown Taipei airport on Wednesday.

"We have not found survivors or bodies of the 12 missing, but we will not give up. We'll continue to search," said Yeh Chun-hsing, an official with Taipei's fire department.

Taiwan's Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) said there were 15 known survivors. Sixteen of those killed were from among a group of 31 Chinese tourists, most from the southeastern city of Xiamen, it said. Three Chinese passengers were rescued.

The pilot and co-pilot of the almost-new turboprop ATR 72-600 were among those killed, the CAA said. TransAsia identified the pilot as 42-year-old Liao Chien-tsung.

Dramatic pictures captured by a passing motorist showed the plane careening over an overpass, its nose up as its port-side wing struck the taxi and roadway just meters from passing cars.

A TransAsia official said the airline would give the families of those killed T$1.2 million ($38,198) for funeral expenses and T$200,000 to each of the injured. Two people on the ground were also injured, it said.

The plane was bound for the Taiwan island of Kinmen, not far from Xiamen. TransAsia said it would fly members of the Chinese passengers' families to Taiwan on Wednesday.