Three survivors were found after the crash of a French military helicopter off Gabon, with one soldier dead and six still missing.
“The provisional toll is one dead, one seriously injured, one lightly injured, one who survived unhurt and six missing,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Francois-Marie Gougeon of the general staff in Paris.
Ten French soldiers, including four crew members and six special forces members, were earlier reported missing after the helicopter crashed into the sea on Saturday during a joint exercise off the coast of Gabon.
The Cougar transport helicopter went down off Nyonie, a small town situated between the capital, Libreville, and the town of Port-Gentil further south, Lieutenant-Colonel Pascal Carpentier said in Libreville.
It crashed at 8:08pm shortly after taking off from the landing craft transporter La Foudre, cruising 50km off the Gabonese coast, Gougeon said.
The ship “set off the alert and went to the scene of the crash with its own rescuers who picked up the injured within half an hour.
CALM CONDITIONS
“The sea was calm and the wind low at the time of the crash but the night was very dark,” he said, adding that “search operations will naturally continue all night” with La Foudre, two helicopters and vessels made available by French oil company Total.
An inquiry would be held into the causes of the accident “very soon,” Gougeon said.
The French presidential palace said in a statement earlier that President Nicolas Sarkozy had been informed about the crash and had “asked that all available means in the area be immediately deployed to find the soldiers who were aboard.”
Sarkozy ordered French Defense Minister Herve Morin to travel to the area. He was expected to leave early yesterday morning.
APPEAL FOR HELP
In Libreville, Carpentier said: “We have put all our available means into the operation. There are aircraft and La Foudre. We have also appealed to Total, which has put three vessels at our disposal.”
Six hundred soldiers backed by Cougar and Fennec helicopters were taking part in a joint exercise to coordinate maritime safety operations. During Operation N’Gari, men were to be parachuted onto predetermined targets including Nyonie.
Carpentier said 120 Gabonese troops participated in the exercise, due to run from Saturday until Wednesday.
“At daybreak we will deploy all our means, planes, helicopters, boats ... to take part in the search.”
Gabonese Interior Minister Andre Mba Obame said France had around 1,000 troops in Gabon, a former French colony, with one of four permanent bases in Africa.
The French Forces in Gabon are here to assure the safety of the 12,000 French residents in the country in case of threat and carry out aid missions, according to a press handout.
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
With a monthly pension barely sufficient to buy 15 eggs or a small bag of rice, Cuba’s elderly people struggle to make ends meet in one of Latin America’s poorest and fastest-aging countries. As the communist island battles its deepest economic crisis in three decades, the state is finding it increasingly hard to care for about 2.4 million inhabitants — more than one-quarter of the population — aged 60 and older. Sixty is the age at which women — for men it is 65 — qualify for the state pension, which starts at 1,528 pesos per month. That is less than US$13