Airplane Crash-Lands In Myanmar, Killing Two

By Amrutha Gayathri | December 25 2012 4:44 AM

A Burmese airliner carrying 71 people made an emergency landing Tuesday morning on a road in central Myanmar, killing two people and injuring 11, officials said.

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Soldiers stand at the crash site of a Air Bagan plane in Heho, Dec. 25, 2012

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Casualties included a 11-year-old child, who was found dead inside the plane, and a man riding a motorcycle on the road where the plane landed, the Associated Press reported.

Four foreign passengers and two pilots on the Air Bagan flight were among the injured, Deputy Information Minister Ye Htut was cited saying by the AP.

The Fokker-100 was carrying 65 passengers and six crew members from Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city, to Heho airport in Shan State, which is the gateway to a popular tourist destination, Inle Lake, the airliner said in a statement.

The plane crash landed about 3km (two miles) from the Heho airport’s runway.

Sources told the AFP news agency a fire had broken out in one of the engines. But Air Bagan spokesman Ye Min Oo said the cause of the accident was not clear.

“Only the pilots will know the cause, but we can't contact them yet as they have been sent to hospital,” the spokesman was quoted as saying by the BBC.