Eleven soldiers die after helicopter crash in south-eastern Turkey

Senior military commander believed to be among dead

Military helicopter crashes in south-eastern Turkey

Military helicopter crashes in south-eastern Turkey
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Eleven Turkish soldiers were killed and two wounded after their helicopter crashed on Thursday in heavy weather in the country's restive south-east, the defence ministry said.

Television images from the crash site showed the ground blanketed in snow and visibility hampered by thick clouds in the mountainous region.

Ruling AKP party legislator Tolga Agar, who is on the Turkish Parliament's defence committee, tweeted that Lt Gen Osman Erbas was among the dead.

Erbas is officially listed as the head of the Turkish army's 8th Corps.

An ambulance drives past soldiers and bystanders to a military helicopter crash site on March 4, 2021, in the eastern Turkish city of Bitlis. Nine Turkish soldiers were killed and four wounded on March 4, when their military helicopter crashed in the southeast of the country, the defence ministry said. The helicopter crashed in the town of Tatvan, in the predominantly Kurdish-populated Bitlis province. The ministry said the accident involved a Cougar helicopter but provided no details about the model.  / AFP / DHA / -
Nine Turkish soldiers were killed and four wounded when their military helicopter crashed in the southeast of the country. AFP.

The ministry did not immediately confirm the senior commander's death but said contact with the helicopter was lost in the Bitlis province 30 minutes after it took off.

Nine of the soldiers died in the crash and two in hospital.

"I pray for Allah's mercy for our ... martyrs. Our pain is great," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's spokesman Ibrahim Kalin tweeted.

Turkish media reports said Defence Minister Hulusi Akar and Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu were both travelling to the site of the crash.

The EU and US immediately offered their condolences.

"We share the deep sorrow of Turkey for the loss of nine military personnel in Bitlis," said the EU's Turkey ambassador, Nikolaus Meyer-Landrut, whose bloc will review its relations with Ankara at summit in Brussels this month.

"Our thoughts are with the families of all those affected, and we wish a rapid recovery to the injured," the US embassy said in a tweet.

The Turkish Defence Ministry said the accident involved a Cougar helicopter.

The Cougar family of multi-purpose helicopters were developed by France and are now produced by Airbus.

Cekmece resident Davut Bikec was one of the first people to reach the site.

“One was slightly beneath the helicopter but there wasn’t a lot of pressure on him," Mr Bikec told the state news agency Anadolu.

“I asked him if he was OK and after he had recovered a little, he said: ‘I am fine'.

“I began digging into the snow; My hands got wounds and bruises. I dug, dug, dug and removed the wounded soldier."

The accident occurred in a region where Turkish forces regularly conduct military operations against outlawed Kurdish militias.

In 2017, a military helicopter crashed in the southeastern Sirnak province near Turkey's border with Syria and Iraq, killing 13 soldiers.