SAN HLAN, Myanmar (AP) – Fishermen joined navy and air force personnel Thursday in recovering bodies and aircraft parts from the sea off Myanmar, where a military plane carrying 122 people including 15 children crashed a day earlier, officials said.
The four-engine Chinese-made Y-8 turboprop aircraft had left Myeik, also known as Mergui, heading for Yangon on a route over the Andaman Sea. It was raining, but not heavily, at the time contact was lost with it at 1:35 p.m. Wednesday, when it was southwest of the city of Dawei, formerly known as Tavoy.
The military announced that the bodies of 29 people had been recovered by late Thursday afternoon – 20 women, eight children and one man. In many cases, the bodies were not recovered whole, said a military officer involved in the recovery operation.
More than 1,000 people, including volunteers from dozens of community mutual aid societies with their vehicles, gathered on the beach at San Hlan village in Laung Lone township, which served as a landing point for recovery operations.
The bodies, fetched from the sea and taken aboard large fishing vessels and navy ships, had been transferred to smaller boats which hauled them into shallow water at the beach, where soldiers put the body bags on stretchers and carried them to waiting trucks. The process had been delayed for several hours by heavy rain and choppy seas.