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Amazingly, no serious or life-threatening injuries were reported after a passenger plane skidded off the runway and broke into three pieces while landing at Myanmar’s Yangon International Airport in bad weather.

The pilot was among those injured when the turbo-prop de Havilland Dash 8-400, operated by Biman Bangladesh, landed after a flight from Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The Aviation Herald reported that the aircraft was carrying 29 passengers and four crew. It  landed and then “veered left off the runway and came to a stop on soft ground with all gear collapsed and the fuselage broken into three sections”, the publication said. That contradicted earlier reports that the plane had only broken in half.

Reports said all 33 occupants received injuries and 19 were taken to hospitals.

No injuries were life threatening.

Photos of the plane posted on social media showed it lying partly on the wet runway and partly on the grass. Its fuselage appeared to be broken in at least two places.

The Bangladeshi newspaper Daily Star quoted Bangladesh’s ambassador in Yangon as saying: “All are injured more or less but no one was in critical state. However, 15 of the injured are hospitalised.”

Airport authorities briefly stopped runway operations after the accident on Wednesday. Biman Bangladesh sent another plane to bring back its crew.

Not long after, another flight landing in Myanmar suffered an equally disturbing mishap, landing without its front wheels. See: Video shows plane landing gracefully without front wheels

Written by Peter Needham