BEIJING, Oct. 19 (Xinhuanet) -- It’s been two days since a Lao Airlines plane crashed and disappeared into the Mekong River. All 49 people on board are presumed dead. More than half were foreigners.

As search teams still struggle to locate the bodies and the wreckage, eyewitnesses are providing more details.

Flight QV301 was scheduled to leave the capital of Vientiane at noon on Wednesday. The flight was two hours late. It ran directly into stormy weather at its destination, Pakse Airport in southern Laos.

"It was raining very heavily with gusting winds. Deep dark clouds were continuously rolling towards the airport from far away," said a witness.

The weather was so bad that there was no visual of the plane on the ground. The plane was ordered not to land and started hovering nearby. It crashed less than eight kilometers from the airport.

"I was two kilometers away from crash. I heard a very big noise and saw the plane hit an island. There was explosion on the plane and it soon caught fire. It then fell into the river," said a witness.

The plane is believed to have skidded from land into the water. 20 minutes later, it had disappeared into the vast muddy Mekong.

As of Friday, only a dozen bodies have been accounted for out of the 49 people on board.

"We’ve been searching since 9 A-M and we still can’t find the fuselage. We believe all the bodies, except those discovered earlier, are still in the fuselage," said Yakua Lopangkao, director-general of Lao civil aviation department.

Thailand has deployed a team of soldiers to help. International experts are also scheduled to arrive on Friday from Singapore, France and Thailand. They will try to locate flight data recorder -- the so-called "black box" -- identify victims, and probe the cause of the crash. The turboprop plane was bought only one year ago and bad weather is being blamed for the accident.

(Source: CNTV.cn)