MYANMAR ARMY PLANE CRASHES

Yangon: Debris has been found in the sea near where a Myanmar military plane went missing with more than 100 soldiers and their families on board on Wednesday. Navy ships and aircraft had been searching since the afternoon when the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers. Most of those on board were thought to be women and children who were travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon. The plane was a Y-8F-200 fourengine turboprop, a Chinese-made model still used by Myanmar for transporting cargo.

Yangon, June 7: Debris has been found in the sea near where a Myanmar military plane went missing with more than 100 soldiers and their families on board on Wednesday, a local official and air force source said.

Navy ships and aircraft had been searching since the afternoon when the plane lost contact with air traffic controllers.

Most of those on board were thought to be women and children who were travelling from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

An announcement posted on the Facebook page of the commander of the military, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said the flight took off from Myeik at 1:06 p.m. and contact with it was lost at 1:35 p.m., when it was believed to be about 32 kilometers to the west of Dawei, formerly known as Tavoy.

The area is about 700 km north of the last primary radar contact with Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished on a flight from Malaysia to Beijing on March 8, 2014.

“Now they have found pieces of the damaged plane in the sea 218 km away from Dawei city,” said Naing Lin Zaw, a tourism official in Myeik, citing the military and adding that they were still searching the sea.

An air force source confirmed that a navy search and rescue ship had found debris in the sea an hour’s flight south of Yangon.

A spokesman for the military’s information team said two-thirds of passengers on board were women and children.

MYANMAR authorities have said there were 106 passengers on board the plane.