100 feared dead as jet crashes in storm; Fireball on runway.

AT least 100 people were feared dead last night after a US-bound jumbo jet crashed just seconds after take-off as a typhoon hit Taiwan.

The Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 heading for Los Angeles was slammed back on to the runway at Taipei's Chiang Kai-shek airport by and intense rain and winds gusting at up to 50 mph.

Taiwan's Transport Ministry confirmed 47 bodies were found inside the wreckage three hours after the crash.

But last night not all of the 179 people on board Flight SQ006 had been accounted for.

At least 75 of the passengers on the jet were not from Taiwan.

Horrified British and American survivors told how the plane broke up around them and burst into flames.

They spoke of seeing people on fire and of seeing at least one woman die later after being taken to the airport terminal building.

Eye witnesses 10 miles away reported seeing the sky light up with the force of the explosion as the Boeing - fully laden with fuel - exploded on the ground.

Paul Blanchon, of Lancashire, managed to escape from the broken jet as it lay on the runaway with flames lapping its underside.

Paul said: "We tried to get as many people as we could out of the section. There were people still strapped in their seats. We tried to get them down.

"There was a gentleman when I got out of the plane who was trapped underneath the tail section of the plane.

"Obviously we could not lift the tail to get the tail off the ground. There was smoke blowing flames from the other and it was engulfing the tail section.

"We tried to tell the firemen there to make it understood that we needed something to jack this section of the plane to get this guy. But it's very difficult to communicate."

The storm, Typhoon Xangsane, drifted closer to the island's southern coast last night and Taiwanese authorities set up relief centres and issued landslide and flood warnings.