MONACO : Five people died when a helicopter crashed in the sea on the French Riviera as it was flying between Nice and the chic principality of Monaco, authorities said.
All aboard the aircraft died in the accident, whose cause was being investigated.
The identities of the pilot and the four passengers were not immediately given.
By late Tuesday, only the body of one of the passengers, a woman, had been recovered by French coastguard vessels deployed to the zone, some two kilometres (one mile) off the Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat peninsula situated a short distance from Monaco.
The bodies of the other four, all men, were reported missing, believed dead.
The helicopter, a single-engine Ecureuil AS-350, was chartered by a Monaco-based company, HeliAir, to shuttle passengers between Nice airport and the principality. Its wreckage was lying 300 metres underwater, a depth inaccessible to coastguard divers.