Another UN Mil-8 crashes!
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Another UN Mil-8 crashes!
U.N. Officials, Including American, among Dead in Mongolia Helicopter Crash
BEIJING (AP) -- A helicopter carrying U.N. disaster relief officials crashed in Mongolia on Sunday, killing nine people including an American and at least two other foreigners, officials said. Fourteen people were injured, 10 of them critically.
The Russian-made MI-8 helicopter spun out of control about 165 feet off the ground, crashed and exploded in flames in northwestern Mongolia at 12:30 p.m., said a Mongolian civil defense official who goes by only one name, Batchuluun.
The United Nations had preliminary information that four U.N. employees were killed: An American, a Briton, a German and a Mongolian, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York. He did not identify them by name.
Eckhard said at least one U.N. staffer survived.
Batchuluun said the plane was carrying eight U.N. representatives, at least two Mongolian government officials and an undetermined number of Japanese and Mongolian reporters. The injured were taken to a local hospital.
The U.N. staffers were part of a team assessing the effects of punishing weather patterns in advance of a visit planned for later this week by acting U.N. humanitarian
relief coordinator Carolyn McAskie, Eckhard said.
Japanese Foreign Ministry official Hiroshi Fukuya said some Japanese citizens were believed to have been on board the helicopter.
Japan's Kyodo News agency, citing Mongolian foreign ministry sources, said the dead included two reporters, one of them from the China bureau of Japanese broadcaster NHK, Kyodo said.
The helicopter crashed near Malchin in Mongolia's northwestern corner, about 600 miles from the capital, Ulan Bator.
Two years of summer drought followed by heavy snows have decimated Mongolia's livestock, which represent about 80 percent of the economy in the largely nomadic country between China and Russia.
McAskie was scheduled to arrive in Mongolia on Wednesday and make an appeal Friday for international aid to alleviate the effects of the weather. That appeal might have to be postponed, Echkard said.
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
BEIJING (AP) -- A helicopter carrying U.N. disaster relief officials crashed in Mongolia on Sunday, killing nine people including an American and at least two other foreigners, officials said. Fourteen people were injured, 10 of them critically.
The Russian-made MI-8 helicopter spun out of control about 165 feet off the ground, crashed and exploded in flames in northwestern Mongolia at 12:30 p.m., said a Mongolian civil defense official who goes by only one name, Batchuluun.
The United Nations had preliminary information that four U.N. employees were killed: An American, a Briton, a German and a Mongolian, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard said in New York. He did not identify them by name.
Eckhard said at least one U.N. staffer survived.
Batchuluun said the plane was carrying eight U.N. representatives, at least two Mongolian government officials and an undetermined number of Japanese and Mongolian reporters. The injured were taken to a local hospital.
The U.N. staffers were part of a team assessing the effects of punishing weather patterns in advance of a visit planned for later this week by acting U.N. humanitarian
relief coordinator Carolyn McAskie, Eckhard said.
Japanese Foreign Ministry official Hiroshi Fukuya said some Japanese citizens were believed to have been on board the helicopter.
Japan's Kyodo News agency, citing Mongolian foreign ministry sources, said the dead included two reporters, one of them from the China bureau of Japanese broadcaster NHK, Kyodo said.
The helicopter crashed near Malchin in Mongolia's northwestern corner, about 600 miles from the capital, Ulan Bator.
Two years of summer drought followed by heavy snows have decimated Mongolia's livestock, which represent about 80 percent of the economy in the largely nomadic country between China and Russia.
McAskie was scheduled to arrive in Mongolia on Wednesday and make an appeal Friday for international aid to alleviate the effects of the weather. That appeal might have to be postponed, Echkard said.
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
