Pieces of metal were scattered around a field planted with rice, corn and wheat, but none was readily identifiable as a part of the Russian-built Tupolev TU-154.

Troops and police combed the field, but police said early today they had not yet found the vital data recorders which could explain China's worst crash in five years.

Initial reports said the China Southwest Airlines plane, carrying 50 passengers and 11 crew, exploded in mid-air on its approach to the airport of the port city of Wenzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang.

But witness accounts described a plane in distress, its rear-mounted engines whining and trailing smoke as it skimmed low over a group of 20 or so four-storey factories and homes before hitting the ground in clear weather late in the afternoon.

Some residents saidthey believed the pilot made a frantic attempt to miss the settlement. Hundreds of people were in the buildings, a direct hit would have caused terrible casualties.

A deep crater the plane gouged out is a short walk from the homes in the settlement of Tangtou. Beyond is a river dyke. ``I heard a huge explosion and at first I thought a gas depot had blown up. Then I saw towering flames and clouds of smoke and found out it was a plane crash,'' said a fisherman who sped to the scene in his motorised sampan.

``It took 30 minutes to get there and by then all I could see was smoke and police everywhere.'' As dawn broke over Tangtou, a tight police cordon kept reporters and villagers away from the site, about 30 km short of its destination.

The entire area is flat with a dried up river bed running through it, suggesting that neither difficult terrain -- nor bad weather or poor visibility -- was to blame.

A hospital doctor sent to the site soon after the crash said the scene was devastating, with bits of bodystrewn everywhere.

``Not one body'' was intact, he told Reuters.

Airline officials said all the victims were Chinese. The plane took off from Chengdu in the southwest province of Sichuan, one of many domestic flights taking people back to work after visiting their ancestral homes for the lunar new year holiday, which ended on Monday.