'No survivors' in US Afghan crash
A United States military helicopter has crashed in south-eastern Afghanistan killing at least nine people, four of them crew, the US military says. The CH-47 Chinook went down in bad weather in the province of Ghazni, spokeswoman Lt Cindy Moore told the Associated Press. She said it appeared there were no survivors.
The helicopter was one of the two Chinooks flying to the main American base at Bagram, north of Kabul, from a routine mission in southern Afghanistan when controllers lost radio contact with the aircraft, Lt Moore said. "Indications are it was bad weather and that there were no survivors," she said. The identity of the passengers is still unclear. The second helicopter arrived safely at Bagram airfield.
Ghazni governor Assadullah Khalid told Reuters that local officials had recovered two bodies from the crash site. "We recovered two American soldiers' bodies and now American forces are in control of the situation. The chopper was burning when we were there," he said....
Abdul Rahman Sarjang, the chief of police in Ghazni, told the Associated Press that the crash occurred in the flat desert near a brick factory about five kilometers (three miles) outside the city. The helicopter caught fire, he said.
"We collected nine bodies, though the Americans told us there were 13 people in total on board," Sarjang told AP by mobile telephone. "They were all wearing American uniforms and they were all dead."