The wreckage of a US military helicopter lost on an earthquake relief mission was found yesterday, high on a mountainside in Nepal, with three bodies recovered and the other five people on board feared dead.
A US search team identified the wreckage as that of the missing Marines UH-1Y Huey helicopter deployed after the Himalayan nation was hit by a massive earthquake last month that killed more than 8,000 people.
Crash debris was found just 13km north of the town of Charikot, said US Army Major Dave Eastburn, spokesman for the US military’s regional Pacific Command.
Photo: AFP
“The assessment of the site is ongoing and a thorough investigation will be conducted,” Eastburn said in a statement.
The statement made no mention of the fate of the six Marines and two Nepali soldiers onboard the Huey, which went missing on Tuesday, the day a strong aftershock hit Nepal and killed more than 100 people.
Nepal says none of the eight on board could have survived.
The Huey, an iconic helicopter dating back to the Vietnam War era, was completely destroyed, Nepalese Secretary of Defense Ishwori Prasad Paudyal said, adding that three charred bodies were found in the wreckage.
“The search for others is continuing,” Paudyal said. “As the helicopter has broken into pieces and totally crashed, there is no chance of any survivors.”
After a three-day search, the Huey was spotted near the village of Ghorthali at an altitude of 3,400m, Nepalese Major General Binoj Basnet told reporters earlier, while helicopters and Nepalese ground troops converged on the crash site.
“It was found on a steep slope,” Basnet said.
The area’s tallest peak soars to more than 7,000m. Hillsides are cloaked with lush forest that made it hard to find the chopper even though it came down just a few kilometers from Charikot, the capital of Dolakha District, which lies half a day’s drive to the east of Kathmandu.
An army base in the town has been serving as a hub for operations to airlift and treat those injured in the two earthquakes, and Nepalese Prime Minister Sushil Koirala flew in on Thursday for an on-the-spot briefing.
A magnitude 7.8 quake struck on April 25, killing 8,199 people. The death toll from a 7.3 aftershock on Tuesday has reached 117, with many of those killed in Dolakha.
The combined toll is approaching the number of just over 8,500 who died in an earthquake in 1934, the worst-ever natural disaster to hit the poor Himalayan nation.
About 76,000 others have been hurt, while hundreds of thousands of buildings — including ancient temples and monuments — have been damaged or destroyed.
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