A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country’s worst air disaster in nearly a decade.

More than 15 hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word about the fate of passengers and crew members, leaving families waiting to learn whether anyone survived.

The Civil Aviation Administration of China said the crash occurred near the city of Wuzhou in the Guangxi region. The plane was flying from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan to the industrial centre of Guangzhou along the east coast.

China Eastern flight 5735 was travelling 455 knots (523 mph, 842 kph) at around 29,000 feet when it entered a steep and fast dive around 2:20 p.m. local time, according to data from flight-tracking website FlightRadar24.com. The plane plunged to 7,400 feet before briefly regaining about 1,200 feet in altitude, then dove again. The plane stopped transmitting data 96 seconds after starting to fall.