amsterdam plane crash

A Turkish Airlines plane has crashed on landing at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport, injuring at least 20 people.

A Turkish airliner crashed at Amsterdam’s main airport about 10:40 a.m. Wednesday local time, Dutch airport officials said.

The plane, with 135 passengers on board, crashed short of the runway near the A9 motorway and suffered significant damage.

It was Flight 1951 from Istanbul and was a Boeing 737-800 aircraft.

Witnesses have spoken of seeing at least 20 passengers walking from the wreckage, with luggage scattered about.

Images from the scene of the Amsterdam crash show the plane broken into three pieces.

“Some passengers are dead, some are injured and some are alive” in the crash, a spokesman from Schiphol airport’s press office said over the telephone before hanging up.

Turkish media said the plane was carrying about 135 people.

The Boeing 737-800, which originated from Istanbul, Turkey, was trying to land at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol when it went down.

There were 127 passengers, including a baby, and seven crew on board.

Earlier reports said there was one dead, but Turkish Transport Minister Binali Yildirim later clarified that no-one had died.

Turkish Airlines Candan Karlitekin told reporters: "There are injured passengers at the back of the plane but there are no confirmed casualties."

Dutch television reported that rescuers had been hampered in getting to the scene because the field was recently ploughed.

The BBC's Geraldine Coughlan in the Hague says television has been showing pictures of helicopters at the scene, with about 20 ambulances and fire engines.

Kieran Daly, of Air Transport Intelligence, said the pictures indicated there had not been a widespread fire.

He said the impact had been severe but it could have been survivable because of the lack of fire.

Daly said their had been vast improvements in the materials used to build airplanes, meaning they did not burn as easily.

Since this report, others have come out reporting that some people have died in the crash, although they have not yet given any numbers. Hopefully those numbers won’t be too great.

All flights have been suspended.

The last crash involving a Turkish Airlines plane was in 2003 when 65 people died in an accident in Turkey.

Schiphol airport has six runways and one major passenger terminal. In 2007, it handled 47 million passengers, ranking fifth in Europe.