AMSTERDAM, Feb 25: A Turkish Airlines plane with 135 people aboard slammed into a muddy field while attempting to land at Amsterdam’s main airport on Wednesday. Nine people were killed and more than 50 were injured, many seriously, officials said.

The Boeing 737-800 broke into three pieces on impact about two miles short of a runway at Schiphol Airport. The fuselage split into two, close to the cockpit, and the tail broke off.

One engine lay almost intact near the wreckage in the muddy field. The other was some 200 metres from the plane and badly damaged, a photographer at the scene said.

Flight TK1951 left Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport at 8.22am, bound for Amsterdam, then crashed at 10.31am.

Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim said it was “a miracle” there weren’t more casualties. “The fact that the plane landed on a soft surface and that there was no fire helped keep the number of fatalities low,” he said.

Survivor Huseyin Sumer told Turkish NTV television he crawled to safety out of a crack in the fuselage. “We were about to land, we could not understand what was happening, some passengers screamed in panic but it happened so fast,” he said.

The fact that the plane landed in a muddy, ploughed field might have contributed to making the accident less deadly by absorbing much of the force of the impact, experts said. This might also have helped avert a fire resulting from ruptured fuel tanks and lines on the underside of the fuselage, which appeared to have suffered very heavy damage. Hours after the crash, emergency crews still swarmed around the plane’s cockpit.

At first, the airline said everyone survived. But at a news conference later, Michel Bezuijen, acting mayor of Haarlemmermeer, reported the fatalities.

“At this moment there are nine victims to mourn and more than 50 injured,” he said. At least 25 of the injured were in serious condition and crew members were among those hurt. He said there was no immediate word on the cause of the crash.

Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency said pilots were not injured.—AP