Beijing(PTI): Hopes to find the survivors among the 132 people travelling by the crashed Chinese aircraft in the thick forests in the southern Guangxi province on Monday receded as the night fell making efforts by scores of rescuers difficult.

The Boeing 737 aircraft of China Eastern Airlines, which flew from Kunming to Guangzhou, crashed in Tengxian County near the city of Wuzhou, causing a mountain fire in the worst air disaster in the country in over a decade.

State television showed teams of rescuers armed with search lights scurrying through the sprawling area in the forests on the remote mountainous area Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region as darkness enveloped the forest region.

The 132 people included 123 passengers and nine crew members, the Civil Aviation Administration of China said on its website.

While the airline has announced that no foreigners were on board, families of some crew members from the crashed Eastern Airlines flight have arrived in the company's branch office in Yunnan Province and they were being assisted to work on follow-up issues , state-run CGTN-TV reported.

A "shocked" Chinese President Xi Jinping ordered "swift action to identify the cause of the crash and to strengthen the safety overhaul of the civil aviation sector to ensure the absolute safety of the sector and people's lives, Xinhua reported.

The People's Liberation Army (PLA) has promptly mobilized rescue forces in the city of Wuzhou to the crash site of the China Eastern Airlines flight, the Southern Theater Command said on Monday.

According to the official media, the plane sharply descended onto the mountainous area and crashed.

Footage shot by locals in their phones showed the area of the crash was engulfed by massive mountainous fire with explosions heard in the background.

There is no official word here yet on the number of casualties or survivors except speculation about the unlikelihood of survivors.

The crash shattered China's airlines record of over 100 million continuous hours of safe flight as of February 19.

The last domestic fatal air accident was in 2010, when an Embraer passenger plane crashed in Yichun, Heilongjiang province, killing 42 people.

As soon as the plane crashed in the forest area, Chinese officials rushed hundreds of fire brigades as well as rescue teams to find the survivors before the night fell.

The fire has been put out and the rescue operation is underway, said Chen Jie, an official with the regional emergency management department.

In his instructions issued soon after the incident, President Xi said he was shocked to learn about the incident involving China Eastern Airlines flight MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou.

He ordered the immediate launch of emergency response, all-out search and rescue efforts and proper settlement of the aftermath, Xinhua reported.

He said swift action should be taken to identify the cause of the crash and to strengthen the safety overhaul of the civil aviation sector to ensure the absolute safety of the sector and people's lives.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang urged efforts to console the families of the victims and provide them with assistance, release accurate information in a timely manner, conduct a serious probe into the incident, and take strong measures to strengthen the safety of civil aviation.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FFA) said via Twitter that it was ready to assist in investigation efforts if asked. Boeing China said it was aware of the media reports of the plane crash and is working to gather more information.

Meanwhile, China Eastern Airlines - one of China's three major air carriers - has grounded its all Boeing 737-800 after the crash on Monday, company officials said.

The airline also made its website have a black-and-white homepage after the crash as it prepared to announce the casualties.

According to news portal The Paper, a staff member at Guangzhou's Baiyun International Airport said that flight MU5735 from Kunming to Guangzhou has not arrived at its destined time, the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

The domestic flight was scheduled to take off from Kunming at 1.10 pm (local time) and arrive at Guangzhou at 2.52 pm (local time) and is now marked out of reach on Baiyun airport's app.

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Washington (AP): The Biden administration said on Friday that Israel's use of US-provided weapons in Gaza likely violated international humanitarian law but that wartime conditions prevented US officials from determining that for certain in specific airstrikes.

The finding of “reasonable” evidence to conclude that the US ally had breached international law protecting civilians in the way it conducted its war against Hamas was the strongest statement that the Biden administration has yet made on the matter. It was released in a summary of a report being delivered to Congress on Friday.

But the caveat that the administration wasn't able to link specific US weapons to individual attacks by Israeli forces in Gaza could give the administration leeway in any future decision on whether to restrict provisions of offensive weapons to Israel.

The first-of-its-kind assessment, which was compelled by President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats in Congress, comes after seven months of airstrikes, ground fighting and aid restrictions that have claimed the lives of nearly 35,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

While US officials were unable to gather all the information they needed on specific strikes, the report said that given Israel's “significant reliance” on US-made weapons, it was “reasonable to assess” that they had been used by Israel's security forces in instances “inconsistent” with its obligations under international humanitarian law “or with best practices for mitigating civilian harm”.

Israel's military has the experience, technology and know-how to minimize harm to civilians, but “the results on the ground, including high levels of civilian casualties, raise substantial questions as to whether the IDF is using them effectively in all cases”, the report said.

International human rights groups and a review by an unofficial panel of former State and military officials, academic experts and others had pointed to more than a dozen Israeli airstrikes for which they said there were credible evidence of violations of the laws of war and humanitarian law.

Targets included aid convoys, medical workers, hospitals, journalists, schools and refugee centers and other sites that have broad protection under international law.

They argued that the civilian death toll in many strikes in Gaza — such as an October 31 strike on an apartment building reported to have killed 106 civilians — was disproportionate to the value of any military target.

Israel says it is following all US and international law, that it investigates allegations of abuse by its security forces and that its campaign in Gaza is proportional to the existential threat it says is posed by Hamas.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the review “only contributes to politically motivated anti-Israel sentiment” and should never have been done.

“Now is the time to stand with our ally Israel and ensure they have the tools they need,” he said in a statement.

But Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who led the push in Congress, told reporters that even even though the administration had reached a general finding, “they're ducking a determination on the hard cases. Politically inconvenient cases”.

The US “treats the government of Israel as above the law”, Amanda Klasing of the Amnesty International USA rights group said in a statement.

Biden has tried to walk an ever-finer line in his support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's war against Hamas. The US leader is a target of growing rancor at home and abroad over the soaring Palestinian death toll and the onset of famine, caused in large part by Israeli restrictions on the movement of food and aid into Gaza.

Tensions have been heightened further in recent weeks by Netanyahu's pledge to expand the Israeli military's offensive in the crowded southern city of Rafah, despite Biden's adamant opposition.

Biden, in the closing months of a tough reelection campaign against Donald Trump, faces demands from many Democrats that he cut the flow of offensive weapons to Israel and denunciation from Republicans who accuse him of wavering on support for Israel at its time of need.

The Democratic administration took one of the first steps toward conditioning military aid to Israel in recent days when it paused a shipment of 3,500 bombs out of concern over Israel's threatened offensive on Rafah, a southern city crowded with more than a million Palestinians, a senior administration official said.

The presidential directive that led to the review, agreed to in February, obligated the Defense and State departments to conduct “an assessment of any credible reports or allegations that such defense articles and, as appropriate, defense services, have been used in a manner not consistent with international law, including international humanitarian law”.

Nothing in the presidential directive would have triggered any cutoff of arms if the administration had more definitively ruled that Israel's conduct had violated international law.

The agreement also obligated the State and Defence departments to tell Congress whether they deemed that Israel has acted to “arbitrarily to deny, restrict, or otherwise impede, directly or indirectly,” delivery of any US-supported humanitarian aid into Gaza for starving civilians there.

On this question, the report cited “deep concerns” that Israel played a significant role in preventing adequate aid from reaching starving Palestinians. However, it said Israel had recently taken some positive steps, although still inadequate, and the US government did not currently find Israel restricting aid deliveries in a way that violated US law governing foreign militaries that receive US military aid.

Van Hollen accused the administration of glossing over what he said were clear Israeli blocks on food and aid deliveries during much of the war. “That's why we have hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that have nothing to do with Hamas on the verge of starvation,” he said.

Lawmakers and others who advocated for the review said Biden and previous American leaders have followed a double standard when enforcing US laws governing how foreign militaries use US support, an accusation the Biden administration denies.

Their opponents argued that a US finding against Israel would weaken it at a time it is battling Hamas and other Iran-backed groups. It's not clear how much Friday's more in-between verdict would add to pressure on Biden to curb the flow of weapons and money to Israel's military or further heighten tensions with Netanyahu's hard-right government.

At the time the White House agreed to the review, it was working to head off moves from Democratic lawmakers and independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont to start restricting shipments of weapons to Israel.

Israel launched its offensive after an October 7 assault into Israel, led by Hamas, killed about 1,200 people. Two-thirds of the Palestinians killed since then have been women and children, according to local health officials. US and UN officials say Israeli restrictions on food shipments since October 7 have brought on full-fledged famine in northern Gaza.

Human rights groups long have accused Israeli security forces of committing abuses against Palestinians and have accused Israeli leaders of failing to hold those responsible to account. In January, in a case brought by South Africa, the top UN court ordered Israel to do all it could to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza, but the panel stopped short of ordering an end to the military offensive.

Biden in December said “indiscriminate bombing” was costing Israel international backing. After Israeli forces targeted and killed seven aid workers from the World Central Kitchen in April, the Biden administration for the first time signaled it might cut military aid to Israel if it didn't change its handling of the war and humanitarian aid.

Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, in the 1980s and early 1990s, were the last presidents to openly hold back weapons or military financing to try to push Israel to change its actions in the region or toward Palestinians.