An air force helicopter crashed in a mountainous area of southern Chechnya Saturday, killing eight people. The cause of the crash was unknown, but Russian military officials said it was unlikely it had been shot down by Chechen rebels.
Officials initially said there were four people aboard the Mi-8 helicopter, but an air force official who declined to give his name -- in line with Russian practice -- said there were nine aboard and that eight were killed. Russian news agencies quoted air force spokesman Colonel Alexander Drobyshevsky as saying the same.
Surviving passenger
The crash killed three crew members and five border guards who were passengers, Drobyshevsky said, according to the reports.
He told NTV television that the surviving passenger -- who NTV reported had accompanied a fuel shipment to a border post in southern Chechnya -- was flown to the main Russian military base in Chechnya and hospitalized with burns and head injuries.
The helicopter crashed in the Itum-Kale district while preparing to stop on the way back to the Russian base at Khankala near the capital, Grozny, after picking up the border guards at the Tuzkhoroi settlement, Russian news agencies quoted Drobyshevsky as saying. Tuzkhoroi is the site of a border post near the Georgian frontier.
The ITAR-Tass news agency quoted Drobyshevsky as saying the pilots of two Mi-24 helicopters escorting the Mi-8 saw it slam into a mountain and suggesting that the crash was an accident -- not the result of rebel fire.
Chechnya's southern mountains are a rebel stronghold, and militants have shot down several Russian helicopters over the region during the two wars there in the past decade, sometimes using shoulder-held missile launchers. Others have crashed because of technical problems or pilot error.
Interfax quoted unnamed military officials at Khankala as saying that the surviving passenger, who was in serious condition, said the helicopter did not come under attack, and that the crash was probably caused by pilot error or a technical problem.
However, it also quoted unnamed officials in the military prosecutor's office for the region including Chechnya as saying investigators believe the most likely causes were an attack or a technical problem.
War is over
A downing by rebels would be embarrassing for President Vladimir Putin and other top Russian officials, who say the war in Chechnya is over.
In Russia's worst military aviation catastrophe, an overcrowded Mi-26 heavy transport helicopter was shot down by a shoulder-fired missile as it prepared to land at Khankala in August 2002, killing 127 people.
A rebel Web site claimed militants downed an Mi-8 that crashed after hitting a power line this March, killing 15 people, but officials denied it.
Following a withdrawal after a 1994-1996 war that left Chechnya with de facto independence, Russian forces rolled back into the region in 1999.
More than five years later, large-scale battles are rare, but deadly violence occurs daily and Chechnya is plagued by abductions blamed on Russian troops, rebels and Kremlin-backed Chechen security forces.
Four people were abducted Friday in Grozny by armed, camouflage-clad men in two separate incidents police believe may have been the work of a single group, Russian news agencies reported.
Also Saturday, Russian news agencies reported that two suspected militants accused of taking part in a June 2004 raid in Ingushetia, adjacent to Chechnya, have been detained; one in Siberia and one in North Ossetia, which borders Ingushetia. Chechen rebel warlord Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for the raid, which targeted law enforcement authorities and left some 90 people dead.
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS