92 remaining soldiers sent back to Myanmar who fled to Mizoram
Aizawl: A day after a Myanmar military aircraft crashed landed in Mizoram’s lone Lengpui airport near Aizawl, all the remaining 92 Myanmar soldiers were sent back home on Wednesday, an Assam Rifles official said.
The Myanmar army personnel along with 14 crew members, who boarded the crashed plane on Tuesday, were airlifted by another Myanmarese aircraft from Lengpui to Sittwe port town in the neighbouring country's Rakhine state, the official said.
With the latest evacuation, a total of 635 Myanmarese soldiers have been repatriated to their country from Mizoram since November last year.
The Myanmar army personnel also known as Tatmadaw crossed the international and entered Mizoram after their camps were overrun and captured by rebel groups and democratic forces.
While 104 Myanmar army personnel were evacuated from different places in Mizoram and sent to the border town of Moreh in Manipur by Indian Air Force (IAF) helicopters in November, 255 soldiers were moved via the Lengpui airport by Myanmar Air Force planes on January 2 and January 9.
Another 184 were airlifted to Sittwe on Monday.
A Myanmar military aircraft, which came to pick up the Myanmarese soldiers, overshot the runway in Lengpui airport on Tuesday causing injuries to eight people.
However, all the 14 crew members, including the pilot, miraculously escaped death.
Meanwhile, officials said that the Myanmarese aircraft that crashed on Tuesday was confirmed a Chinese plane.
They said that the right engine malfunctioned which might cause the accident and it was unlikely an error on the part of the pilot.
The pilot was an experienced pilot and he was the same person, who landed in Lengpui earlier on Monday, they said
The Myanmar government has bought many Chinese planes, which met accidents on several occasions, the officials said.
