Military helicopter crashes near Vietnam`s capital, killing 19

USPA News - A military helicopter struck a house before crashing near the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi on early Monday morning, killing nineteen service members in the country`s worst aviation disaster in more than two decades, officials said. Two people survived the crash.

The accident happened at about 7:46 a.m. local time when the Russian-made Mi-171 helicopter went down in the village of Hoa Lac in Thach That District, located on the outskirts of the capital Hanoi. The helicopter was carrying 21 service members on a routine parachute training exercise. The country`s information ministry said the aircraft - belonging to Helicopter Regiment 916 of the Air Defense-Air Force Service`s Air Division 371 - had taken off from Hoa Lac Airbase at 7:30 a.m. About sixteen minutes later, the aircraft lost contact and struck a house before crashing into gardens near a busy market. Authorities said sixteen service members died at the scene of the crash while five others were rushed to hospital, where three more victims succumbed to their injuries, putting the total death toll at nineteen. The two remaining survivors were both said to be in a critical condition. Witnesses, speaking to state-run media, said the helicopter was flying low and struck a three-story house while hundreds of people were at a market nearby, causing shoppers to panic and flee the area. "Fortunately, the pilot managed to fly the aircraft in a different direction (away from the market), causing it to crash in a garden near the market," one witness was quoted as saying. It was not immediately known what caused the accident, but the information ministry said teams had been sent to the scene to investigate the crash. With nineteen fatalities, it marks the country`s worst aviation disaster since November 1992, when a Vietnam Airlines flight crashed near the southern city of Nha Trang, killing 30 people. Only one person survived the crash.