Feb 16, 2022: The junta’s information team said in a statement that a Myanmar military plane crashed in the north of the country on Wednesday morning after a “technical failure”.
The statement said the jet, which was flying from Tada-U Air Force Base near Mandalay, lost contact at 10:43 a.m. (0413 GMT) this morning and later crashed in the Sagaing area. The search and rescue operations are underway, the statement said. The statement added that the pilot was flying on a non-combat training mission.
Myanmar’s junta have called in regular air strikes to fight “people’s defense forces” – armed groups that have emerged to fight the military government – in several areas, including Sagaing.
With an aviation sector that is under developed, plane crashes are common in Myanmar, and the country’s monsoon season has in the past created problems for commercial and military flights. In June, 12 people were killed when a Myanmar military plane crashed in the central part of the country carrying a senior monk and several donors to a religious ceremony.
A military plane crashed in the Andaman Sea in 2017, killing all 122 people on board. Authorities blamed bad weather. And in 2015, an Air Bagan passenger plane veered off from the runway in heavy rain. A passenger and a man on the ground were killed.
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