Pakistan air crash kills ambassadors
NEWS DESK (DİHA) - An army helicopter has crashed in a mountainous part of northern Pakistan killing six people including the Philippine and Norwegian ambassadors.
It crashed during an emergency landing in the Gilgit-Baltistan territory. The wives of the Indonesian and Malaysian envoys and two Pakistani pilots also died. They were to attend the opening of a tourism project. The Pakistani Taliban (TTP) said they were behind the attack, but there is no confirmation of the claim.
"The helicopter was shot down by an anti-aircraft missile," a statement emailed by Taliban spokesman Muhammad Khorasani said. However military spokesman Asim Bajwa said on Twitter that the crash had been caused by a technical fault. The area is not a stronghold of the Taliban.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was scheduled to attend the inauguration, but his aircraft turned back from Gilgit after reports of the crash. Mr Bajwa said in an earlier post that Norwegian envoy Leif Larsen and Domingo Lucenario of the Philippines had been killed.
He said five others were injured, including the Polish and Dutch ambassadors. Eleven foreigners and six Pakistanis were on board the MI-17 helicopter when it came down in the Naltar valley, he added.
'In flames'
The helicopter hit a building belonging to an army school in Gilgit-Baltistan. The building caught fire but no children were in class at the time, a senior official told the AFP news agency. Local resident Sher Ahmed told the news agency that there had been a heavy security presence in the area ahead of the visit. "I was in my garden with my family watching the helicopters arriving when we heard a loud explosion and then the school building was in flames."
Meanwhile, an unnamed senior official told Pakistan's Express News that strong winds were blowing when he saw the helicopter crash go down.
(nt)
