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Singapore Airlines Flight 006 Disaster's Death Count Rises to 65

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JUDY WOODRUFF, CNN ANCHOR: Reporting, now, from Taipei with the latest on the crash is Jason Blatt of our Taiwan affiliate, TVBS -- Jason.

JASON BLATT, TVBS REPORTER: Well, Judy, the latest information that we have on the crash so far is that the death toll is officially, now, set at 65 people. That is to say, 65 bodies have been pulled out of the wreckage and everyone has been confirmed dead. Now, there are still another 30 persons who are known to be onboard the plane that have been unaccounted for. Now, all the government officials are saying pretty much, at this point, there's not much chance that these 30 may be alive.

But the good news is is that there are another 68 persons who, indeed, have survived the crash and are receiving treatment at four hospitals in the area nearby the Chiang Kai-shek airport. Now, of this total, only six people are considered to have very serious injuries and in the intensive care unit and so forth. And in addition, there are another 16 people who were fortunate enough to be very, very mildly injured or not injured at all.

So these people have been released either to a hotel or to their homes -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: Jason, describe, if you will, the difficulty in retrieving those who you say are still unaccounted for.

BLATT: Well, the last time we had a big plane crash a couple years ago, not too far from where this crash was, when a China Airlines plane went down, I was there at the scene the next morning and most of the bodies were literally in pieces and completely unrecognizable. Some of the bodies had to be identified, eventually, by the jewelry they were wearing, for example.

Now, I'm not sure what the scene is here at this sight, but from eyewitness reports we've heard that the plane broke into three parts -- the fuselage broke into three parts after it hit the ground. So the people who were sitting in the very front part, including first class, business class and the cockpit and so forth, the fire was much stronger in that part, so that may be the problem that they're having right now -- Judy.

WOODRUFF: All right, Jason Blatt reporting for us from Taipei; thanks very much -- Bernie.

BERNARD SHAW, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Carl Rochelle has reported extensively, as you know, on aviation stories. He joins us now.

Carl, clearly it's still early in this investigation, but what do we know so far?

CARL ROCHELLE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the strongest evidence right now, Bernie, is from the pilot, from the captain of the airliner himself. Singapore Airlines says that he believes he hit something on the runway.

Now, that's consistent with one of the reports that we heard earlier from one of the passengers, John Diaz, who said that the plane was going along straight down the runway and suddenly it felt like they hit something; something hit and stopped the airplane. And I asked him: Did they have the power up full on the engines? Did you notice anybody pulling back on the power? Were there any announcements, anything said from the captain or the flight attendants to expect a problem? And he said no. We were just going along and we hit.

Bernie, one other point, let me tell you the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board has eight members who are on the way over to assist with this investigation right now, and they'll be looking at cockpit voice recorder, flight data recorder -- good information from the cockpit voice recorder because we'll hear, not only what the crew was saying to controllers, but we'll hear what the crew were saying to each other as they tried to deal with this emergency.

SHAW: OK, thank you Carl Rochelle.

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