Someone decribing on Tee Vee, the recovered tail:
"It looked (~pristine) as if 'unbolted' as a unit."
Now break-away engine mounts make sense, as mentioned above. But parts of (a whole?) wing allegedly detached in mid-air here, as well...
Heard of two previous 'engine uninstalls' in flight:
1) Lost engine physically. Believe it crashed.
2) Engine apparently detached and sped ahead of plane quite briefly (!) Belief was: that the plane crashed into it = crashed too. (How they learned this factoid - have no idea, if it indeed crashed subsequently)
So 'breakaway' may have its own problems. Too early to guess if in this case BOTH engines ingested birds, oscillated from the unbalanced hi-speed mass of breaking internals AND, while striking the plane subsequently (?)
fractured neatly -- all the tail bolts -- without marring the tail! I call this - an impending mystery, guesstimating that - a saboteur might have removed a lot of bolts / replaced some with: Woods Metal fakes !!)
(Mayhap in one o' those foreign repair places, run to less than FAA standards - talk about inventing stuff from too little data! Mea culpa)
Ashton Scriptwriter of Disaster Movies