Update: 12 people killed in helicopter crash in eastern Turkey
Xinhua, April 18, 2017 Adjust font size:
Altogether 12 people were killed after a police helicopter crashed in Turkey's eastern province of Tunceli, the Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu confirmed on Tuesday.
There were no survivors of the crash, and the bodies of the passengers and crew members were found by rescue teams, Tunceli Governor Osman Kaymak announced in a statement.
A Turkish police helicopter carrying 12 people, including one judge, seven police officers, one sergeant and three crew members, crashed in Tunceli on Tuesday, the governor said.
The helicopter crashed into a rural area at an altitude of 2,500 km between Cambulak and Kocatepe villages, according to the Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD).
Contact with the Sikorsky helicopter was lost at 11:50 a.m. local time, according to officials, as no signals were received from the helicopter approximately 10 minutes after it took off.
Teams from the AFAD were dispatched to the mountainous rural area of Tunceli's Cambulak district to conduct search efforts.
The Turkish air force also dispatched a CN235 type aircraft to detect the location of the debris.
The rescue teams reached the helicopter wreckage after battling with poor weather conditions for almost four hours. Endit