A rescue helicopter crashed while heading to evacuate residents near an active volcano on Indonesia’s main island, killing all eight people on board, officials said yesterday.
The helicopter crashed about three minutes before arriving at Dieng Plateau, the popular tourist area where a volcanic eruption on Sunday injured 10 people.
The aircraft reportedly hit a cliff on Butak Mountain in Central Java Province’s Temanggung District.
Photo: AFP
All eight people on board were killed, said Major General Heronimus Guru, deputy operations chief of the Indonesian National Search and Rescue Agency.
“We are now at the Bhayangkara Hospital in Semarang,” the provincial capital where the victims’ bodies were taken, he said.
The victims were four navy officers and four rescuers, Brigadier General Ivan Tito, director of operation and training at the agency, told TV One in a live interview from Temanggung.
The Indonesian-made Dauphin AS365 helicopter was airworthy, he added.
The Sileri Crater at Dieng Plateau spewed cold lava, mud and ash as high as 50m into the air when it erupted on Sunday morning, Indonesian National Disaster Mitigation Agency spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho said.
The sudden eruption occurred while about 17 visitors were around the crater. Ten people were injured and were treated at a hospital.
Soldiers and police officers were dispatched and local residents and visitors were asked to evacuate in case of further eruptions, Nugroho said.
Sileri is the most active and dangerous among about 10 craters at Dieng Plateau. Its most recent eruption was in 2009, when it unleashed volcanic materials up to 200m high and triggered the creation of three new craters.
Sileri area head of culture and tourism Dwi Suryanto said the crater was quiet yesterday, but remains closed to visitors.
Other craters on the plateau are still open, he added.
Dieng Plateau in Banjarnegara District is a popular tourist attraction because of its cool climate and ninth-century Hindu temples. It sits about 2,000m above sea level.
About 142 people were reportedly asphyxiated in 1979 when the volcano spewed gases.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in