Half the number of bodies from Myanmar plane crash recovered

YANGON: Search crews in Myanmar have now recovered the bodies of nearly half of those who died in last week’s military plane crash, the army said yesterday.

The Chinese-made Shaanxi Y8 aircraft was carrying 122 people -- soldiers, crew members and children and other relatives of servicemen -- when it plunged into the Andaman Sea on Wednesday.

Navy ships and fishing vessels have been battling strong monsoon swells to find victims, with the army saying they had recovered 59 by Sunday afternoon.

“The number of dead bodies found in total is now 59,” the commander in chief’s office said in a statement, adding 26 victims were pulled from the water on Sunday.

There has been no official explanation for the cause of the crash, one of several deadly incidents involving Myanmar military aircraft in recent years.

Army chief Min Aung Hlaing was quoted in local media on Sunday as saying weather was more likely to be a factor that mechanical failure.

But while monsoon season brings annual bouts of rainy weather, there were no reports of major storms along the plane’s f light path when it disappeared while f lying from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon.

The four- engine turboprop aircraft was less than two years old and had only flown some 800 hours, according to Myanmar’s military.

But the Y8 is a Chinese variant of the Soviet- era Antonov An12, which has something of a dubious safety record.

It is not clear whether Myanmar has the kind of resources needed to locate a flight recorder within an ocean.