Taiwan chopper crash kills military chief
Print Edition
TAIWAN’S top military chief was killed in a helicopter crash yesterday, the island’s defence authority said yesterday.
Taiwan’s defense authority confirmed that a Black Hawk helicopter lost contact with air control yesterday morning, and went down in the Wulai District of New Taipei City, China Central Television reported yesterday.
Rescue personnel arrived at the crash site at 1:30pm, and found five survivors of the severely damaged helicopter, Taipei-based news website chinatimes.com reported.
Survivors were carried off the mountains for treatment rather than being air-lifted due to bad weather.
The “chief of the general staff,” Shen Yi-ming, was among eight senior officers, including three major-generals, who died when their Black Hawk helicopter smashed into mountains near Taipei.
The 62-year-old general and his entourage were on a routine mission to visit soldiers in northeast Yilan county for the upcoming Chinese New Year when the incident happened.
Shen was the highest-ranking military official to die while on official duty, the Taiwan government said.
The UH-60M helicopter disappeared from radar less than 15 minutes after taking off, said Taiwan’s “air force commander” Hsiung Hou-chi, adding that a task force has been set up to investigate the incident.
“We are investigating whether (the cause) was environmental or mechanical,” he told reporters.
Taiwan’s meteorological authority said the weather was not likely a factor, according to Taiwan media reports.
The US-made helicopter had 13 passengers including three senior military officers, a journalist and crew, CCTV reported.
Taiwan political leader Tsai Ing-wen, who is seeking re-election, promised to prioritize rescue operations and investigations into the incident and cancelled all campaign activities until Saturday, her campaign office said in a statement.
There have been a number of incidents involving Black Hawk helicopters — purchased from the United States — in recent years in Taiwan. In 2018, a chopper belonging to a rescue agency crashed during a medical mission off outlying Orchid Island, killing six people in an incident attributed to human error.
There were also two crash landings in 2016 and 2018 with no casualties. Taiwan’s military spent about NT$85 billion (US$2.83 billion) in 2008 to purchase 60 Black Hawk helicopters from the US to replace its outdated UH-1H helicopters, chinatimes.com reported.
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