Austrian Airliner Blows Up Over Thailand; 223 Die : Disaster: The Vienna-bound jet goes down in remote jungle after takeoff from Bangkok. A police officer says it exploded in a fireball.

An Austrian jetliner exploded not long after taking off from Bangkok on Sunday night, scattering wreckage over a wide area of remote jungle. Police said that all 223 passengers and crew members aboard the plane were killed.

“There was a fireball in the sky and then a big boom,” said a Thai police officer who saw the explosion from the window of his office in Suphanburi province.

The crash, the cause of which is yet to be explained, was the 12th worst in aviation history.

Authorities said early today that the only American known to be on the plane was the pilot, whose name was not immediately made public.

The Boeing 767-300 belonged to Austria’s Lauda Air, a charter airline founded by former auto racing driver Niki Lauda to compete with the government-owned Austrian Airways.

Police officials said the plane exploded in a huge fireball near Dan Chang police station, about 100 miles northwest of Bangkok. It was not immediately established whether the plane had initially caught fire or whether there had been an explosion on board that might have caused the fire.

The Austrians maintain strict neutrality in most international disputes, such as the Persian Gulf War, thus making it unlikely that an explosion might have been purposefully touched off, motivated by politics.

Hospital officials said only eight bodies had been recovered by early today. The crash site is about 20 miles off the nearest paved road in heavily jungled terrain, they said.

The Lauda Air flight originated in the British colony of Hong Kong on Sunday, then traveled to Thailand’s capital. It was on its last leg home to Vienna when the crash occurred.

The plane carried 213 passengers and 10 crew members, according to Lauda Air officials. The jetliner was nearly full.

“The plane was flying normally for about 20 minutes,” Lauda told Austrian television Sunday night. “Then there was this catastrophe. We know nothing about the cause of the accident.”

Asked about the passenger list, Lauda said: “There were many Austrians on board.”

A Thai airport official said the passenger list contained the names of 38 Thai travelers, but he gave no nationality for the others on board.

Thailand has become immensely popular as a tourist destination for European travelers. Lauda began his fledgling airline by flying charter flights to Bangkok and the southern resort of Phuket, finally establishing regularly scheduled service in 1988.

Lauda Air officials said the 767-300 was 18 months old. It was one of two of the type of long-haul aircraft used by Lauda on the route.

Lauda, who gave up Formula One motor racing in 1985, said he would fly to Bangkok immediately to question investigators about the cause of the crash. Lauda is a licensed pilot and frequently takes over the controls on the flights to the Far East.

Prakob na Songkhla, chief of the Lauda Air office in Bangkok, said early today that “we have no idea what happened (to cause the disaster),” the Associated Press reported.

Prakob said that the plane carried 213 passengers and 10 crew members.

Police Sgt. Maj. Charan Palung, who said he saw the jet blow up, quoted other police officers at the crash site as saying that tattered clothing was seen hanging from trees, the AP reported. Some reports said the wreckage was still burning when the first rescue teams arrived.

The last major air crash in Thailand occurred in November when a Bangkok Airways turboprop plane slammed into coconut trees as it was preparing to land on the Gulf of Thailand island of Samui, AP said. All 37 people aboard the domestic airliner were killed.