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| Sunday, 24 February 2002 |
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Seven missing in US chopper crash in Philippines DUMAGUETE, Philippines, Feb 23 (Reuters) The Philippines' military was searching on Saturday for seven U.S. servicemen missing after their helicopter, involved in anti-terrorism exercises, crashed a day earlier in the sea. The bodies of three other servicemen aboard the MH-47 Chinook helicopter have been recovered and taken to Okinawa in Japan, the U.S. Pacific Command said. The helicopter went down in the Bohol Strait, some 660 km (410 miles) south of Manila, at around 2.30 am Friday (1830 GMT Thursday) during a flight from Basilan island to Cebu in the central Philippines, military officials said. It had just completed a series of night flying sorties, ferrying U.S. Green Beret special forces and equipment to the rebel-infested island of Basilan. A Philippine air force helicopter and navy ship were combing the crash site, 20 nautical miles south of Dumaguete City, along with several fishing vessels, a Reuters correspondent on board one of the vessels reported. Weather conditions in the area were good, although the seas were rough. Hopes of finding the missing men alive were fading more than 24 hours after the crash. The victims were the first casualties in what is viewed as Washington's second front in the war against terror after Afghanistan. Some 660 U.S. soldiers are in the southern Philippines to train the local military in their fight Muslim guerrillas linked to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda, chief suspect in the September 11 suicide airliner attacks in the United States. Mystery surrounded the cause of the crash of the helicopter, which the United States is investigating. Some fishermen said they heard an explosion and others said they saw the helicopter come down in flames. "There were no reports of hostile fire," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, told Reuters. There has been considerable opposition to the U.S. deployment in the Philippines and shots were fired at a U.S. military transport plane last month, although no one was hurt. Officials said cloud cover was low and the seas choppy at the time of the crash but conditions were not unusual. EXERCISES UNAFFECTED MH-47s are upgraded versions of the CH-47 Chinook troop-carrying helicopter and are configured for night operations and other work by elite soldiers. The crash would not alter schedules for the exercises, the Philippine military said. Some 6,000 Philippine troops are hunting Abu Sayyaf guerrillas on Basilan and 160 U.S. special forces will be there until June to train them. Another 500 U.S. support personnel will be in the nearby city of Zamboanga and in Cebu, the main staging area for the U.S. forces. A total of 22 American troops have already died in or near Afghanistan in a four-month-old U.S. military thrust there. Few of those deaths have been in military action. |
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