Four Spanish soldiers killed in helicopter crash

A helicopter crash in south-eastern Haiti killed four Spanish soldiers late Friday, according to UN officials. The soldiers were working with a UN mission in the earthquake-stricken country.

By News Wires (text)

AFP - Four Spanish soldiers were killed Friday when their helicopter crashed in a mountainous area near Haiti's border with the Dominican Republic, the UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti said.

"The four Spanish soldiers are dead," said George Ola-Davies, a spokesman for the mission. The Spanish consul general in Haiti, Juan Pedro Gomez, also confirmed the deaths.

The soldiers' remains "are in the process of being recovered and will be rapidly repatriated to Spain," Gomez said.

Spanish Defense Minister Carme Chacon will travel to Haiti on Saturday with General Jose Julio Rodriguez, chief of the defense staff, to find out "first hand" the circumstances of the crash, sources in her ministry said.

The cause of the crash was not immediately known.

But the Spanish Defense Ministry said in Madrid that the helicopter was returning from the Dominican Republic with another helicopter when "they lost contact with each other due to poor visibility."

"A search operation then began and the damaged helicopter was finally spotted on the side of a mountain which was difficult to access" near Fond-Verettes, about 50 kilometers (31 miles) east of Port-au-Prince.

A Chilean helicopter with the UN peacekeeping force was the first to reach the scene, but was unable to land because of the mountainous terrain, Ola-Davies said.

Two US Blackhawk helicopters were then dispatched to the site and their crews were able to confirm that the Spanish soldiers had been killed in the crash, he said.

The crash victims were part of a 450-member Spanish military detachment sent to Haiti aboard the supply ship Castilla after the January 12 earthquake that killed 220,000 people and left Port-au-Prince in ruins, Gomez said.

Three other Spanish helicopters based on the Castilla were participating in the recovery operation, Ola-Davies said.

The helicopter went down in the same area where an Uruguayan CASA 212 transport plane crashed October 9, killing 11 peacekeepers -- six Uruguayans and five Jordanians.