Asiana Airlines' crash: 2 Chinese teens who died were headed to US for summer camp
Two middle school students from China’s east China’s Zhejiang province who died in Saturday’s San Francisco air crash were among 70 Chinese students and teachers travelling on the ill-fated aircraft to the US for a summer camp. Sutirtho Patranobis reports.
Two middle school students from China’s east China’s Zhejiang province who died in Saturday’s San Francisco air crash were among 70 Chinese students and teachers travelling on the ill-fated aircraft to the US for a summer camp.
According to reports, four teachers and 30 students were from Zhejiang and six teachers and 30 students were from North China's Shanxi province.
On Monday, eight relatives of the two teenage girls killed in the crash and another four relatives of two people who were injured in the Saturday crash boarded a flight bound for San Francisco after traveling to Shanghai and obtaining their visas, said the publicity department of the city government of Jiangshan in east China's Zhejiang Province, where the two victims came from.
The 12 people are being accompanied by two teachers from the victims' middle school and four local government officials.
Authorities from Zhejiang province suspended study tours after Saturday's plane crash.
Parents, according to state-run Xinhua news agency, had paid about 30,000 Yuan (about 4,839 US dollars) to send their children on a two-week study tour to the United States.
A statement from the ministry of education in Beijing said it had contacted officials in charge of education affairs with the Chinese Consulate general in San Francisco and asked them to offer all possible help to the students and teachers, the statement said.
“My son called me at 3 am this morning, saying that the plane he took crashed, but he is safe. And he comforted me, saying don't worry about him. He then sent a short message at 6 am to let me know he is safe,” the father of a student surnamed Zhang was quoted in a state media report.
A total of 141 Chinese citizens were among the 291 passengers aboard the flight.
“Based on information obtained from their boarding passes, two female middle school students from Jiangshan city, Zhejiang province, died in the accident, a reply from Asiana Airlines' head office in China to the Jiangshan municipal government said,” the report said.
But the identities of the dead have not been confirmed by DNA tests yet, according to the reply.