PHUKET, Thailand &#8212 A passenger plane filled with foreign tourists crashed Sunday as it tried to land in pouring rain on the island of Phuket, splitting in two and bursting into flames, officials said. At least 88 people died.

The budget One-Two-Go Airlines domestic flight OG269 was carrying 123 passengers and seven crew members from the capital, Bangkok, to Phuket – popular among tourists for its pristine beaches and one of the areas hardest hit by the 2004 tsunami.

Survivors described their escape amid chaos and fire.

“As soon as we hit, everything went dark and everything fell,” said Mildred Furlong, 23, a waitress from Canada. The plane started filling with smoke and fires broke out, she said. A passenger in front of her caught fire, while one in the back kicked out a plane window.

“I saw passengers engulfed in fire as I stepped over them on way out of the plane,” Parinwit Chusaeng, a survivor who suffered minor burns, told the Nation television channel. “I was afraid that the airplane was going to explode so I ran away.”

Wallop Thainua, the country’s deputy health minister, said about 60 bodies were retrieved quickly, but it took hours to get the other bodies out. Seventy-eight of those on board were foreigners.

Officials said the McDonnell Douglas MD-82 crashed in a downpour, skidded off the runaway and broke in two. Some said weather was likely a factor in the crash.

“The visibility was poor as the pilot attempted to land. He decided to make a go-around but the plane lost balance and crashed,” said Chaisak Angsuwan, director general of the Air Transport Authority of Thailand. “It was torn into two parts.”

Local television reports showed parts of the twisted and smoking wreckage sitting off to the side of the runaway. Masked rescue workers converged on the plane, carrying away bodies wrapped in white sheets.

Lt. Gen. Amporn Charuchinda, chief of the police forensic bureau, said that the authorities might move some of the dead bodies to a mortuary in Phang Nga province where some of the tsunami victims were kept.

Sunday’s crash is the country’s deadliest aviation accident since Dec. 11, 1998, when 101 people were in the crash of Thai Airways plane at Surat Thani, 330 miles south of Bangkok. Forty-five people survived.