Taiwanese rescue officials say they will not give up hope of finding 12 people still not accounted for in Wednesday’s TransAsia plane crash that has killed at least 31 of the 58 passengers on board.

Yeh Chun-hsing, a Taipei fire department official, said: “We have not found survivors or bodies of the 12 missing, but we will not give up. We’ll continue to search.”

So far, 15 survivors have been identified; among them a one year old baby whose two parents also survived the crash.

According to Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration, there were 31 Chinese tourists on-board the plane, mostly from the South eastern city of Xiamen. Sixteen of those killed were among those tourists.

TransAsia Flight GE235, carrying 58 passengers and crew on Wednesday staggered between buildings, caught a taxi and a bridge with one of its wings before crashing upside down into a river three minutes after taking off from a Taipei airport.

There was speculation in local media that the pilot may have turned sharply to follow the line of the river to avoid crashing into a high-rise residential building.

The chief executive of TransAsia, Chen Xinde, publicly apologised for the crash and an official of the airline said families of those killed would be given T$1.2 million ($38,198) for funeral expenses and T$200,000 to each of the injured, with two people on the ground also injured, one of whom was a taxi driver.

Wednesday’s crash is the latest in a series of aviation tragedies in the last one year and the second by a TransAsia plane in the last six months. In July 2014, TransAsia flight ATR-72 crashed as it tried to land in the Penghu Island after a typhoon, killing 48 people.

According to Macau’s Civil Aviation Authority, the engines of TransAsia Flight GE235 were replaced at Macau Airport about 10 months ago, during its delivery flight, “due to engine-related technical issues”.

The aircraft’s last maintenance was on January 26, according to Taiwan’s Civil Aviation Authority, and the last communication between the airline and control tower was the pilot saying “Mayday engine flameout.”

According to experts, a flameout can occur when fuel supply to an engine is disrupted or when there is faulty combustion, but twin-engined aircraft like TrasAsia Flight GE235, which was powered by two Pratt & Whitney PW127M engines, can usually keep flying with one engine