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A military transport aircraft carrying ninety-two people, mostly troops overshot the runway on Jolo Island in Southern Philippines. The plane crash has claimed at least seventeen lives while forty were pulled alive from the burning wreckage.
According to reports, the soldiers were part of the military’s stepped-up presence in the southern Philippines to combat Islamist militants and many of them, only recently completed basic military training.
Officials said there was no sign that the aircraft had been attacked, and an investigation would start once the rescue operation was complete.
