A plane from the Chinese company Tibet Airlines left the runway Thursday morning May 12 before catching fire at Chongqing International Airport (southwest China), without however causing any deaths, according to the company.
All 113 passengers and nine crew members were evacuated and put
"in safety"
, indicated the carrier.
About forty people, slightly injured, were however taken to hospital, the airport said.
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The aircraft was to make a domestic flight between Chongqing and Nyingchi in the Tibet Autonomous Region (southwest China) but an incident occurred around 08:09 local time (00:09 GMT).
“During the take-off phase, the crew noticed an anomaly and interrupted the procedure.
The plane went off the runway
,” Tibet Airlines said in a statement.
"The plane was damaged by fire"
.
Video released by state broadcaster CCTV shows a plane on the runway and a fierce fire raging nearby, with thick black smoke rising into the sky.
The chain had initially indicated that the destination of the device was Lhasa, the capital of the autonomous region of Tibet.
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This is the second air accident in China in less than two months, after the still unexplained fall of a Boeing 737-800 on March 21 in the Guangxi region (south), which killed 132 people.
It was China's deadliest air disaster in nearly 30 years, despite the country's generally considered good air safety.